Rockstar manually created every room and all NPC in GTA 6
Developers of Grand Theft Auto VI strived to eliminate visual and procedural simplifications, so every room present in the game was manually filled with details.
The same approach is applied to NPC: instead of automatically generating Leonidas’s inhabitants, the studio separately developed their appearance and behavior.
Each room was created manually
Aaron Garbut, co-lead of Rockstar North and art director of the GTA series, spoke about the scale of the work. According to him, in GTA 6, each room is the responsibility of specific developers. The team determined which characters were inside, where they were sitting, what they were drinking, and what items surrounded them.
Refinement even extends to details that most players may never notice. For example, developers accounted for marks left by objects on tables, and photos on the walls may depict people present in the room. At the same time, such character features as tattoos are preserved, and their family members may be present in the photos alongside them.
Some of these materials were specifically created, collected, and photographed before being placed in the interior of a specific building. Thus, Rockstar aimed to make the rooms an integral part of the story of the people living there, rather than just a collection of standard furniture and props.
At the same time, the developers’ words do not mean that absolutely every building GTA VI can be explored from the inside. Rockstar has not yet revealed the number of interiors available for visitation. The point is that rooms, which truly exist in the game world, were created with hand-crafted details.
A separate team was formed for NPC
Rockstar has invested even more resources into the population of Leonida. In Los Angeles, a separate team of screenwriters, directors, and producers has been established, with the primary task of developing NPC.
Developers have abandoned the approach where the system automatically assembles characters from various body, clothing, and other element variants. Instead, the appearance of the residents of GTA 6 underwent separate artistic development.
This approach should solve one of the problems of previous GTA, where pedestrian behavior remained relatively simple. As an example, Rockstar cites GTA V: if a character dropped an item after colliding with the player, they would soon forget what happened and continue walking.
In GTA 6, the environment must respond significantly more actively to what is happening. Already during the recent 26-minute demonstration, developers showed more complex interactions between pedestrians, the player, and the police.
In GTA 6, there are more than 600 thousand animations
The scale of changes is well illustrated by the number of animations prepared. Rockstar announced that GTA VI contains more than 600,000 animations.
For comparison, GTA V used about 55 thousand animations, while Red Dead Redemption 2 used approximately 300 thousand. Thus, GTA 6 outperforms the previous part of the series by more than ten times and approximately doubles RDR 2.
A large library is needed not only for the main characters and plot-driven characters. A significant part of the work is focused on the open-world population, which Rockstar wants to make less stereotypical.
The world of GTA 6 will be significantly larger than previous Rockstar games
Such detail is especially remarkable given the size of the game world. According to Rockstar itself, Vice City is approximately twice as large as Los Santos from GTA V in area, and the entire GTA 6 map is roughly three times larger than the playable territory of Red Dead Redemption 2.
Developers claim they strive to maintain detail even at vast distances. Garbut gave an example with cars: a car can be seen from the top of a skyscraper, you can jump with a parachute and after landing discover exactly that car which was visible from above.
Rockstar is considering GTA VI as a development of ideas from Red Dead Redemption 2. However, now complex interaction systems must be transferred from the relatively sparsely populated world of the Wild West to a modern metropolis with much higher density of people, vehicles, buildings, and events.
Recently, Rockstar showcased 26 minutes of GTA 6
New details emerged shortly after the major presentation of Grand Theft Auto VI. On August 27, Rockstar released an extended demo lasting nearly 27 minutes, fully recorded on a standard PlayStation 5.
The video shows gameplay featuring Jason and Lucia, shootouts, heists, police chases, exploration of Vice City, and numerous side activities. At the same time, developers are placing a major emphasis on interaction with the surrounding world and situations that the player will be able to discover independently while exploring Leonida.
Grand Theft Auto VI will be released on November 19, 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The PC version has not yet been officially announced.
