GTA 6 will never meet your expectations

Doing the job that I do, reading certain articles and trawling social media on a daily basis, one thing is becoming more and more likely: GTA VI is never going to live up to expectations.

Let’s look at this objectively and take in a few stats. GTA V has sold over 200 million units worldwide, which has earned Rockstar Games and Take-Two around $8.6 billion. The game has been released across several platforms, first launching on PS3 and Xbox 360 in September 2014, before going on to launch for PS4 and Xbox One the following year. Of course, it has since been upgraded for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles while finding a thriving community on PC as well.

These are, frankly, staggering numbers. No other singular game, aside from maybe the original Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog have seen anything close to this level of consumption. To put this into perspective, there are more copies of GTA V existing than there are people in Russia or Bangladesh.

It’s hard to meet those sales figures, but if any game can do it, it’ll be GTA VI. However, those facts are quite something to live up to and the fanbase waiting for this game is rabid - and let me be clear, I don’t mean that negatively. I do hold firm, however, that no matter what Rockstar Games pulls out of the bag, it’s never going to meet the hype or expectations of fans.

Rockstar Games

Oh to be a fly on the wall inside the headquarters of Rockstar Games and Take-Two. They must surely be feeling the pressure and the heat. Every single day, there are hundreds of speculative articles, Reddit posts, and social media comments about the game. The trailer and the leaks from September 2022 have been dissected countless times, and eager fans have gone through everything we know with a fine-tooth comb.

In the past few weeks, I’ve seen Reddit posts dedicated to: the number of colours shown in the trailer, the fact that there are disabled parking spaces in Vice City, whether the time of day will impact traffic, expectations on upcoming earnings calls, and even analysis on the cars and which real world vehicles they’re based on (one fan has even gone to lengths of counting every single car in the trailer).

If the GTA VI community can pick apart something, they will. It doesn’t help that the game is scheduled for next year and we haven’t seen more than one trailer, which didn’t even feature gameplay.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with looking at a game with this level of detail - though outside of perhaps Marvel movies, I’m struggling to think of another medium that warrants this level of scrutiny. Combing over everything like this can only end badly, right?

If you’re sitting on Reddit or Twitter every day looking for tiny clues in trailers that have now been around for months, forming ideas about character models, radio stations, and locations to explore, you’re creating a narrative that can’t be matched. The human imagination is a powerful thing and what you’re thinking GTA VI is going to look like is likely way off the mark.

Rockstar Games

Sure, it’s going to look stunning, the story will be first-class, and the gameplay only needs to slightly surpass that of GTA V for it to be a success, but it will never rise to what you’ve got in your head. Not if you’re speculating whether the high-rise buildings might have interiors to explore, or whether the angry grandma from the trailer is a character we’ll meet. Because what if they aren’t? Then you’ve built a narrative that might never manifest which can only end in disappointment. Ultimately, Rockstar Games can’t do everything, despite the billions of dollars it invests.

That’s not to say that I’m sitting here crapping on those who are speculating - if that’s fun for you, I’m not going to yuck your yum. However, as I sit here typing away, I can’t think of any other game in the last 10 years to create this kind of rampant speculation. I also cannot think of any game that has lived up to the expectations set by the fanbase.

A Bethesda veteran recently warned against fans building up too much expectation for The Elder Scrolls VI and I fear the same thing is happening here. There’s no doubt these titles will be amazing games but, as the developer said in that aforementioned interview, it is “almost impossible” for these games to match what we have in our heads.

It’s times like this when I wish that Rockstar Games was a little more open. The studio has always been very closed-off and it’s said that employees have to sign NDAs upon leaving the company to prevent them from talking about projects, past and present.

Of course, if they were open and laid out more of what’s going on with the game, it would be beneficial to all but I can also understand that closed-off nature because announcing features or mechanics for the game will only stoke the hype train further.

Rockstar Games

The chances the game will deliver are high. If you look at Metacritic and wheel back the years to 2001 when GTA 3 released, the game earned a Metascore of 97 out of 100. That’s the same score as GTA V.

Between those years, we got GTA: Vice City, which earned a 95, GTA: San Andreas, which also scored 95, and GTA IV, which landed a whopping 98 out of 100. The track record is there. It’s clear that Rockstar Games makes masterpieces, and that’s without taking the Red Dead Redemption series into account, or looking further back to the likes of Bully.

However, we must tread with caution. Rockstar Games has become so big that anything short of excellence, or perfection in some cases, could be ruinous - and when they fuel speculation, the stakes get even higher.

As we inch closer to 2025, we will begin to see a full-blown promotional campaign begin. Another trailer will drop, screenshots will start to appear, interviews will be conducted, and slowly we’ll get a bigger picture of what’s to come. I only hope that the eventual product doesn’t fall short for fans (me included) who have spent the better part of a decade wondering what’s next. Because I feel confident in saying that it’s going to be amazing, but it still won’t meet that expectation.