GTA VI: Rockstar North boss took about 80 hours to finish it

Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, told The New York Times that it took him roughly 80 hours to finish Grand Theft Auto VI in February. According to the paper, his run covered the main story plus some optional goals that affect the narrative. Whether that figure includes free roaming in the open world wasn't made clear.

Before anyone prints it on the box: this isn't an official playtime. Insider Gaming points out that Nelson wasn't playing a final build, and this is one developer's pace, someone who knows the map pretty well.

IGN ran its own comparison: GTA IV and GTA V take around 30 hours and Red Dead Redemption 2 about 50-60, so at 80 hours GTA VI would be Rockstar's longest game yet. GamesRadar+ adds that Rockstar says the map is three times the size of RDR2's, so there's room to get lost.

Nelson isn't in a hurry anyway: he hopes players will take their time and explore the world as Jason and Lucia instead of racing through the campaign. The everyday stuff is part of that:

I hope that there will be people that want to get up, have a cup of coffee, shower, get dressed, go out for a little exercise.

He described his in-game character eating an apple, opening the fridge and drinking a smoothie, which boosts health for a while. In his words, this allows "people to sort of role-play." IGN also lists basketball, fishing and exercising among the open-world activities (San Andreas veterans are already looking for the gym).

He also explained why not every idea makes it in:

Of course we want to do everything; we want to have every mechanic that you can imagine. But we do have to carefully pick and choose what we think is best for our characters and our story and what we can handle creatively and technically.

Rockstar gave us the first official look at Jason and Lucia's story in a special preview on Netflix today, August 27.

So how will you play it: straight to the credits, or morning coffee with Lucia first? ;)