Gang members, cops and Beyonce: how Rockstar researched GTA VI
In a LOVE Magazine interview, Aaron Garbut and Rupert Humphries talk about Florida research trips, the team writing pedestrian dialogue, and why GTA VI doesn't satirise real-world events.
LOVE Magazine has an exclusive interview with Rockstar Games, barely a month before Grand Theft Auto VI comes out. Most of it is about the love story between Jason and Lucia, but there are some nice bits about development too. According to Insider Gaming, the interview runs in the October 5 edition of the magazine.
Let's start with the research. Head of development Aaron Garbut says "every game we make starts with research trips". A small group first set off from Miami, went through the surrounding towns and the Florida Keys, all the way down to Key West.
The team travelled around with cops and with gang members as well. Garbut says "everyone is lovely", though some people are equally scary, and "the stories, the places, the details could be terrifying".
The best story is from one shoot: the devs flew low over mangrove inlets in the Everglades, then ended the day hovering over a stadium during a live Beyonce concert. In Garbut's words: "I think we made the local news that day." (We'd happily play that one as a mission.)
Garbut sums up Miami as "lovely people, incredible wealth, incredible poverty, excess, craziness, the hustle, and showing it all off". Rupert Humphries, Senior Vice President of Narrative, calls Miami and Southern Florida "a particular front line for this battle between astronomical wealth and unbounded ambition, creating a pressure cooker for all kinds of insanity".
Humphries also set the new game against GTA IV's immigrant story and GTA V's cynicism: "Maybe the American Dream is more modest now. It's a house for your family and your loans paid off instead of wild success."
Satire came up too. IGN's summary says Rockstar deliberately avoids recreating real viral moments, since they can date a game. Instead, GTA VI goes after modern culture, conspiracy theories and "the strange ways people react to events". Eurogamer's headline quotes Rockstar saying "it has to be more over the top, more insane, more in your face". GamesRadar+ picked out a different line: one of the GTA VI bosses says Rockstar has to "forego realism" for the players' sake, because "too much can feel tedious".
And if you think the chatter on the street is filler, Humphries disagrees: "We have a specific team of pedestrian dialogue writers in LA, and then a team of advertising and comedy writers across New York, LA, and London." He adds: "And none of us see it as background! It's all part of the tapestry of the game and creates the experience of living in this wild world." The old-timers who laughed at Vice City's radio ads know exactly what he means.
Two things here are not from the interview. Insider Gaming adds as background that Leonida is split into six primary regions and that the map is said to be "twice as big" as GTA V's. IGN also mentions that the Miami Heat announced a special game where the team will wear a GTA VI uniform in a themed arena.
Next month we finally get to look around Leonida ourselves. What are you more curious about, the pedestrian chatter or the ads? Let us know!
