GTA VI: Rob Nelson on the Tom Petty song, plus new details from a preview
A Rockstar North boss says the game wasn't fully formed at the first trailer, but the Tom Petty song set the direction. Meanwhile a creator's preview talks fighting styles, out-of-breath cops and hidden safes.
Rob Nelson, one of Rockstar North's co-studio heads, sat down with French outlet TroisCouleurs. He said Grand Theft Auto VI was far from finished when the first trailer came out, but the Tom Petty song in it showed where the project was heading:
With the first trailer for this game, the Tom Petty song [Love is a Long Road] was a real sort of mission statement... You don't have the game fully formed, you have an idea of what it's going to be.
According to Nelson, at the start of a new game the team rallies around "an image, often it is a song". Once the setting is picked, the guys go there to "drive around" and "take a ton of pictures".
GamesRadar also reports that satire came up. Nelson says "there will always be things to satirize", but Rockstar has to "be careful about what we pick", because after 11 years of development "it could be gone, it could change, it could be dated." Nelson also gave a longer interview to Japan's Famitsu, which GTAVice.net has translated into English.
Details from a preview
The other fresh source is content creator MikeShowSha, who got to play the game and talk with Nelson. His account was translated on Reddit by El_Pintor64 and summed up in a video by TGG. Keep in mind these are second-hand reports, not official Rockstar statements. Here we go:
- Lucia fights in a more technical, agile way (kickboxing, mixed martial arts), while Jason is a traditional street brawler with powerful punches.
- You can give your AI partner contextual instructions: Jason told AI-controlled Lucia to hurry up, and she drove faster and more aggressively through traffic.
- NPCs react to how visibly armed you are: some try to disarm you, others run or show fear.
- After a fight, an NPC dropped a hat and glasses, which Jason could pick up and wear.
- Cops come in different builds: a heavier officer chasing Jason on foot ended up bent over, exhausted and out of breath.
- The police car crashes in the extended look were unscripted, and Nelson pulled off a similar one during the session.
- During a shop robbery, a threatened cashier revealed a safe in the back room, leaving the choice between a bigger score and getting out.
- In a random open-world event, two masked women stuck mid-robbery in a jewelry shop asked Jason and Lucia for help. Rockstar said it hadn't seen this event in its own testing for months.
- NPC clothing changes from area to area, with sportswear near gyms, for example.
So what's your move at the register: go for the safe in the back, or grab what you can and run?
