Everybody wants Grand Theft Auto VI to be the biggest game in the world, to the extent that I'm genuinely concerned for the staff at Rockstar Games.
GTA V remains one of the most popular video games of all time, while Red Dead Redemption 2 redefined what it's possible to do in an open world game - both in terms of scope and detail. That's a lot of pressure on the in-development GTA VI, isn't it?
Take a look at everything we know about GTA VI so far below!
While we know that Rockstar is currently actively working on the next game in the GTA franchise, very little is known about what we can expect from it. Industry analyst Michael Pachter recently took to the internet to share his own wild claims about the upcoming game and what he alleges to have heard about it so far.
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Before we go any further, I'd advise you to take these rumours with a hefty pinch of salt. While Pachter has occasionally been on the money in the past, he's not the most frequently reliable source. If nothing else, much of what he's claiming either sounds too good to be true or in direct contrast to what other insiders have been saying about GTA VI.
According to Pachter, GTA VI will have around 400-500 hours of content, and allow players to explore multiple cities across America and Europe. He mentions Los Santos, Liberty City, Vice City, and London, noting that the game will offer missions that sends players all across these locations.
"GTA VI has been in development since 2014," he said. "They may have not been writing code back then as they were figuring out the story, but by 2015 they were writing code. Anybody who is so naive as to think Rockstar with its 2000 employees is sitting on their butts twiddling their thumbs... No, they're not, these guys are working their asses off to create amazing content, but GTA VI is going to take 10 years or more.
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"The reason is, my understanding is, it is a mash-up of Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City, and Europe - London for sure. You're going to be able to go anywhere on those continents and you're going to have missions that take you all those places.
"It'll probably be literally a four or five-hundred-hour game by the time they get it out. That's what they are doing now, that's what they've turned GTA VI into. I get it because they're like, we're gonna charge you 60 bucks, and then we're going to give you an online experience and you're going to have to carry drugs from London to LA, you're going to have to go through the port in Miami. They're going to do all this really cool stuff."
As exciting as this sounds, it is worth remembering that previous reports suggested GTA VI will be a much more scaled back affair in response to the crunch reports that surfaced during development on Red Dead Redemption 2.
It was Kotaku that reported Rockstar was looking to minimise crunch on GTA VI by launching a smaller game that would be expanded over time. Prolific leaker Tom Henderson added several months later that the game is likely to take place in Vice City initially, adding that the map will constantly evolve to include new locations. This could, I suppose, include entirely new cities - but I don't think we should expect GTA VI to be anywhere close to a 500 hour game at launch. And frankly, nobody in their right mind should want it to be.
Topics: GTA 5, Rockstar Games, GTA 6