The Full Rockstar North Interview

In July this yr, IGN was invited to Rockstar North to see GTA 6 being performed for the very first time, with Head of Development and Co-Studio Head Rob Nelson on the controller. It was actually one of the exhilerating experiences of my life – seeing GTA 6 in motion earlier than anybody else! And, when the Netflix prolonged look dropped in August, I used to be lastly capable of share my thoughts on what I’d seen. My preview detailed every thing I noticed within the unique 30-minute demo, which included a new-look wanted system, a new way to steal cars, and the way Jason and Lucia’s romantic relationship – though front-and-center within the demo and the Netflix video – is completely elective.

I additionally spoke at size with Rob Nelson. He talked us by way of a few of the huge concepts within the sport, the adjustments to a few of the sport mechanics everyone knows and love, and the 13-year growth course of that has gone into making Grand Theft Auto 6 the largest, most immersive entry into the GTA collection but. The highlights of that conversation had been printed again in August too, however the entirety of that dialog has been sitting on my laptop computer… till now.

So why publish it, and why now? Although the protection IGN ran again in August covers all of the headline matters, the complete interview captures what it was prefer to be within the room whereas GTA 6 was being performed. It wasn’t a prescribed demo and infrequently issues did not work out as deliberate, and I discovered wanting again over the complete transcript of the interview actually fascinating. And that is why I needed to share the complete interview with you, as a result of I hope you discover it fascinating too. As for the ‘why now’ of all of it, why not now? It’s GTA 6 and admittedly I’m as excited for this sport as anybody.

Since the interview passed off whereas taking part in GTA 6, the dialog generally jumps round and infrequently describes what’s taking place on-screen, however I’ve completed my finest to fill within the gaps so that you get a way of what it was like. I hope you get pleasure from studying it as a lot as I cherished watching it!

IGN: Obviously there are the set items and the story missions in GTA 6, nevertheless it appears there’s much more for Jason and Lucia to do on the planet…

Rob Nelson: There is a ton of stuff the participant can do in GTA 6, as Jason and Lucia on their very own or collectively, in between missions and story-driven content material.

IGN: I’m additionally fascinated to know extra concerning the couple dynamics…

Rob Nelson: We can simply run the sport and begin strolling round, I believe that is probably the most pure option to do it.

The problem for us on this sport is identical as it’s on any new sport for us, which is – how can we evolve and construct upon the nice issues we have now completed earlier than, in all of the methods this stuff must evolve, however on the identical time be certain that the sport nonetheless has every thing that made the earlier video games on this collection resonate with folks?

[The demo starts with Jason and Lucia hanging out at a Safehouse. Jason has longer hair than we saw in the trailer, and is busy grabbing a drink from the fridge, examining a romance novel he finds on a table, and interacting with Lucia.]

This is one among their Safehouses. Jason and Lucia can exist on this area collectively. This represents an thrilling problem for us: placing Jason and Lucia on schedules that really feel plausible and making the Safehouse much more interactive. The Safehouses [in GTA 6] are most likely nearer to the camps in RDR2 than they’re to safehouses in any GTA sport earlier than, when it comes to how interactive they’re and the way a lot they really feel like your house. But this isn’t their very own home, they’re staying in another person’s home.

You can change characters and pop over to the sofa. We tried to maintain this mechanic as open as potential, though there’ll clearly be occasions in the course of the narrative the place it isn’t potential.

We have some fundamental beauty choices within the Safehouse the place you may regulate minor issues and do some easy stuff to your hair—reduce it shorter or shave it off. In the Safehouse, it’s solely reductive – in order for you new hairstyles it’s a must to go to a hair salon or barber. There are lots of hair salons and clothes retailers everywhere in the world and every place has some commonplace stuff you may get, after which additionally stuff that’s distinctive to these locations to essentially encourage exploration.

For now, I’m going to exit alone for a short time and take a look round…

[Nelson takes Lucia on a stroll around downtown on her own, wandering through an urban park packed with people talking, a man walking his dog on a leash, joggers, and everything you’d expect to see in any busy city.]

One of the good issues about this sport being developed from the bottom up on this era of {hardware} is profiting from all of the reminiscence that we have now on the most recent era of consoles, mixed with our groups’ expertise doing this for therefore lengthy collectively. NPCs have extra peak differentiation and physique form differentiation than ever earlier than; we might by no means have had this selection earlier than as a result of completely different physique sorts needed to share animation units. So in the event you had the identical animation on the 5’6” individual and the 6′ 2″ person, they wouldn’t line up if they’re fighting or sitting in cars—basically, any interactions with each other or the environment. But [in GTA 6], the team worked out a system where they now retarget those animations on the fly. Now we have a huge variety of heights and shapes, and it all works together because of what this team was able to pull off.

The NPC interaction system is one that is returning and evolved from Red Dead Redemption 2. In the past we’ve had systems where you can speak to NPCs. In RDR1 and GTA 5 there were basic systems for interacting, but the interactions were very simple. But with Red Dead Redemption 2, we were finally able to incorporate the ability to interact with NPCs as a more fleshed-out system. Traditionally, L2 was a binary action that immediately aimed your gun at someone or locked onto them for combat. But as the resolution has increased, the experiences we create have had to evolve alongside that – the fidelity of them, how you can exist in them, and what you can do in them.

So on RDR2 we came up with a control solution where, if your gun is in your holster and you hold L2 to lock on to an NPC, you just have the option to talk to them. You can greet them or antagonize them, or you can pull R2 to draw your weapon. But adding those options into RDR2 created a huge challenge for us.

We have to do so much work in design, in code behaviors, in animation, and in writing to get these interactions to feel believable. Now, everybody across all of these teams – across technical teams, animation teams, across design teams, across writing teams – needed to, in a way, become students of human behavior. You find yourself watching how people behave out in the world and studying the rise and fall of a conversation as you pass two people. As you listen, you can count like 7 to 10 words and glean what they’re talking about. To try and recreate the feeling of this properly, we ended up needing to build an entirely new team of writers, directors, and producers in LA to create the depth and breadth and variety of crazy people saying crazy things that we needed.

While we pushed this sort of interaction with NPCs as far as we could for Red Dead Redemption 2, with GTA 6 we are taking it much further. The team has done an incredible job to create all of this crazy dialogue, and you can stand there and listen to them, but we’ve tried to find a balance where if you stand too close to a group, they should notice you and notice that you’re eavesdropping. So, if you stand there and try to listen to the whole thing, they’ll often turn around, notice you and go, ‘Oh hey, can I help you?’ Or if you follow people for too long and too close so that they can hear you, they’ll go, ‘Oh, hey.’ Then they may be aggressive, or they may just want to get away from you. When we first started these ideas back on Red Dead Redemption 2, we thought if we could get it working in a more sparsely populated world, we imagined what it might feel like at scale in a modern world. So it was one of the scary but very worthwhile and fun challenges we took on with this game.

The world will act upon you as well as you acting upon the world. I think in previous GTA games you were a bit all-powerful. You were the only one with an invisible arsenal hidden away. Apart from the police, everyone would run in terror from you if you started acting out. This world in GTA 6 is not like that.

A huge amount of time and research and work went into populating the world, styling the people so that every district and every town that you go to feels appropriate. Hopefully for people who want it, it’s fun to just do this sort of open-world stuff, wander around, talk to people, explore, and see what happens.

[Nelson interacts with some NPCs when another group spots the interaction and pulls a gun.]

IGN: [Laughs] That escalated!

Rob Nelson: That escalated, yeah, they got involved – but nobody’s dead. They’re all still fine. They will get up and walk away. But somebody’s called this incident in. Our dispatch is extremely specific in what it knows. This team has done an incredible job with this. If I get out of here, that’s a one-star Wanted level, which is not really a big deal. I aimed the gun at the person, which defused the situation, and they all ran. Otherwise, I would’ve ended up beating people up. If I get out of this area where the police are going to respond, I should be totally fine.

As much as possible, we tried to design the game so that you have options. Things can escalate quite quickly if you want them to, or people who don’t want to escalate can try to avoid it. It’s not always possible! To me, that supports the narrative. This is a story about a couple on the run. We have tried to make the systems and the design support our narrative when and wherever possible. Meaning, if you hit and run, commit a crime and run, get into trouble and move on before the cops get there, and you don’t start shooting people, don’t start escalating – which you absolutely can do if you want to – but if you don’t, you’re generally going to be fine.

So I can check my map – this is a hot area. The cops are there. If I go back, they’ll be hanging around for a little while. You can see if I hover back over that area of the map, I still have one star in that area.

We have put some layers of stratification into the vehicles. Previously, you could just press triangle to automatically hotwire and steal any vehicle that you wanted and take off. We felt like that left a lot of potential gameplay on the table in terms of progression and decision-making for players. I think it gives all the vehicles more meaning, and you need to pay attention to what you’re doing a bit more. So now, you start off the game and there are certain parked cars that are not accessible to you until you get a bit further along with the story and you acquire certain tools to get into them, but you can always carjack any driver you see.

We also now have this scanner as a part of the phone, where you can put it over the vehicle and learn about it. For example, it tells me this car is locked, it’s got an alarm, and has no tracker. It also tells me how much it’s worth if I go to take it to a Pay n’ Spray or a specialty car fence and how much it would cost for me to register it for myself.

So, for example, this car needs a key cloner. This other car will just need a slim-jim. So we’ve added a lot of fun little tools you need or mechanics you need to perform these formerly binary

actions.

Now, we can go and sell this truck, but it’s not really worth very much. Is there anything you’re interested in seeing?

IGN: I mean all of it! [Laughs] But some of those day-to-day things that you can go and do… that’s one of my favorite things about Red Dead Redemption 2.

Rob Nelson: Just the existing?

IGN: I finished Red Dead 2 a number of times and I had a save of it where I could just load it up and play.

Rob Nelson: That’s essentially what GTA 6 has as well – you can just exist.

[Nelson takes Lucia into one of the salons dotted around the map.]

Every one of these salons – and there’s many of them – has signature hairstyles. They also have the standard ones.

Similar to Red Dead Redemption 2, we put a lot of focus towards trying to make it so that you can do these sorts of open-world things in a very natural way.

IGN: I noticed that when you are doing things, sometimes there are little icons to say you did a good thing or a bad thing. Is there a reputation system?

Rob Nelson: There is a system that tracks what sort of criminal you are. And then there is also a relationship system. They’re separate. You manage the relationship in the way you hopefully nurture any relationship – which is by spending time together. So being in the open world and exploring together or doing activities together – playing pool or mini golf or kayaking; normal slice of life things. Or robbing stores together, robbing banks together. However players want to spend that time together, it will have a positive impact on the relationship.

The reputation system you are asking about is something we call your Criminal Profile. It’s different than the honor system in Red Dead Redemption 2. There isn’t a right or wrong way to play this game, but consistent sorts of actions may have an impact in terms of how the world reacts to you and how the narrative plays out.

In GTA 6, you are playing as criminals on the run but the narrative is such that it makes most sense for them to do what they need to do while not drawing unnecessary attention, even though sometimes that happens! So if you’re doing things on a mission that you are required to do – or you’re robbing places, or somebody comes and messes with you and you have to deal with them by smacking them down or whatever – that’s all fair game. It’s when you go beyond what is necessary on a consistent basis or you do completely unnecessary stuff consistently that you may start to sway your criminal profile in a certain direction. Maybe you care about that as a player, maybe you don’t. There is no right or wrong way to play this.

To us, it’s a very interesting concept. In previous games you’re quite overpowered in the world compared to everyone else apart from the cops, which can be fun but not as fun, I don’t think, as having a world where there may be other people that have impulses of their own and act upon you. You are still powerful and capable, but you are not the only one capable of violence or the only one with weapons or the only crazy person out there. It makes the world far more unpredictable and interesting. It’s something that we started doing in Red Dead Redemption 2, where you are not the only dangerous person in the world. There are gangs that will attack you, things that will happen to you. The world will act upon you. That happens here a lot, and then when it does, you have a decision to make. How do you want to deal with it?

[Lucia is in another altercation with an NPC]

Oh! And then she did it anyway. This system opens up so many possibilities for people to play how they want. You go, ‘Oh, do I want to shoot this person? I could try and threaten them and make them back down or knock them out or shoot them but not kill them; just incapacitate them.’ There are a lot of levels to the way you can deal with situations now.

Again, people should play it however they want. With these new options we are hopefully creating some room for people to have fun with how they want to approach things and decide whether they want to plan and be a bit more cautious to keep a lower profile or whether they don’t care. We have found it makes every decision you make carry more meaning.

Again, if I take off here, I should be fine. We’re really trying to encourage this hit-and-run style of gameplay.

So, the police are searching for me. We have this warmth system, and so they know what I appear to be and what I’m sporting. Here’s a pair of glasses – I’ll placed on this and this baseball hat. But they nonetheless know what I’m sporting, so I would want to go to a clothes retailer or name my private car, which has adjustments of outfits within the trunk.

IGN: Would changing your hair be enough to throw the police off?

Rob Nelson: Changing your hair will change your appearance, but the police will still know what you are wearing, so it’s not great if I am standing out in the open.

[Lucia is escaping the cops on foot]

We put a lot of work into how you can navigate the world, trying to make everything as smooth as possible to really encourage this type of gameplay where you are running and getting out of the car. Jumping and climbing fences. If you get three stars in the city, it can sometimes be challenging to get away in a vehicle, unless it’s a very fast vehicle or a sports bike. Your best option is usually to do this – get off the streets and get on foot into the alleys.

Now we have heat, and they’ve seen me wearing this; this [outfit] is compromised. But if you take it off, you should be okay. Again, as long as you try not to draw too much attention to yourself, you should be fine.

[In the game, Lucia lays low in a 7-11 style mini mart, buying a baseball cap and gum while an oblivious cop passes by outside the store.

Eating has quite a dramatic effect on your health. You’ll gain quite a substantial buff, so it can be useful.

IGN: With everything you’ve done in this, would you at any point have been able to swap out for Jason?

Rob Nelson: Yeah.

IGN: I’m assuming he will have his own routine, so he won’t just be sitting there waiting for you?

Rob Nelson: He has his own routine where he’ll go out and do his own thing. You can switch to him and sometimes he’s in the Safehouse, sometimes he’s out doing various things.

[At this point in the demo we get to see what seems to be an unplanned encounter between Lucia and man in a dumpster.]

You can give this guy in the dumpster pills, or choose not to. You can come back and see him and he gives you legal advice. You can get in the dumpster with him!

[At this point Nelson switches to Jason’s POV, where our hero is… naked.]

Oh, or you can switch and Jason’s in the shower!

We do have gyms where you can go and work out so you can go up in levels of muscularity or strength. If you overeat, you will put on weight.

I can add changes of clothes to my trunk, so if I’m out, I have them in my personal vehicle.

There are more radio and in-game TV ads than ever before. A lot more.

We have made money matter more in this story than I think it has in previous GTA games. There are times when you actually have to go out into the world and make money – whether you’re boosting cars and selling them or sticking places up, there will be parts of the game where you need to make money to advance the mission flow.

You can text the other character – Jason or Lucia – at any point, or you can call them. It’s quite cool when you text back and forth. Lucia just responded, ‘Sweet, I’ll come to you.’

If you want to just spend the whole day out on your own as one of the characters, that’s fine; the othe one will text you: ‘Hey, I’m going to go to bed to lock up, you OK?’ All you need to do is respond, ‘I’ll see you later,’ or, ‘OK, goodnight,’ and that’s good enough. If you don’t bother to even respond, it may impact your relationship a bit.

So, we have these little things that you can do anytime Jason and Lucia are together if they have a relationship. Holding hands is done by holding R2, and it feels very natural. We want a lot of these interactive things that we do – talking to people and this sort of stuff – to feel good in your hands.

We spent a lot of time developing these characters and what their back story is – how they met, how much time they spent together, how well they know each other. One of the things we are interested in exploring with these games – and it’s something we did probably most consciously on Red Dead Redemption 2 – is the idea of how much of this character is them and how much of it is you, the player.

For example, Arthur – as we played through Red Dead Redemption 2, sometimes it felt like, ‘Why am I listening to Dutch?’ He’s clearly crazy. You know – ‘Why am I helping these people? I don’t even know them.’ People would ask us that and we would say, ‘Well, because Dutch saved you when you’re 15 years old, when you didn’t know how to read.’ And they say, ‘Me? He saved Arthur.’ So, we tried to do a couple of things to address this. We added an element to the story where Dutch is the only one who knows where Arthur’s money – and all the gang’s money – is, to try to create a secondary, more player-centric motivation. So, if it was not enough for you as the player to just take Arthur’s loyalty to Dutch at face value and go along with it, we’ll also try and give you a personal reason as the player to be invested for your own sense of wanting something for you. We also needed to make sure we had missions where you spent time with each member of the gang to try and get to know them to help the player form a connection with them.

Another thing we tried to do to enhance the player’s connection to their character in that game involved any of the kind acts that Arthur was able to perform. Originally many of them were mandatory, but that felt wrong. So, we started taking them off the main story flow and just making them optional. So, you as a player were required to go and meet his ex-girlfriend Mary Linton, but you didn’t have to help get her little brother out of the cult, and you didn’t ever have to meet her again. We tried to make sure that a lot of these things were optional so that hopefully if you wanted Arthur to have some sort of redemption arc, you felt more strongly connected to it because you helped him achieve it as a player.

We also made very subtle changes to the cutscenes and his stated motivations for things. If you were high honor and if you as the player had been showing that you cared about these things, Arthur would tell John, ‘Get out of here when this is going down. Do it for me; it would make me feel…good, I guess.’ But if you had low honor, he didn’t say that. He said, ‘Don’t be an idiot.’ And it wasn’t black hat versus white hat – it was just figuring out how to not make Arthur too sentimental, if that was not the way you were playing. Interestingly, some people would get the low-honor ending that resulted in Micah shooting Arthur in the head and they would die face down in the dirt, and they’d say, ‘Why did that happen to me?’ [Laughs]

It’s interesting to play around with and explore these ideas, and we are definitely continuing down this path with GTA 6. With the relationship, we start Jason and Lucia off wanting to give it a shot, but just going through the story and playing missions together may not be enough to keep them together. You’ll have to keep them together by spending a bit of time together in the open world, and then hopefully that will reinforce your connection to them and increase your investment in their story.

IGN: What about if you don’t keep Jason and Lucia together?

Rob Nelson: If you don’t, we’ve played around with it and thought about it a lot. The narrative is structured in such a way that the circumstances they find themselves in require them to stay together for most of the story and work together. At the very least, they will get through most things as partners in crime.

I don’t want to say too much more about this because I don’t want to spoil anything. It really adds a compelling element to things, and it’s one of the reasons we wanted to approach this sort of story, because it’s completely different for us. Could we bring some sort of emotional resonance to GTA for people if they wanted to engage with it? Could we also provide mechanisms for people to just opt out of it if they’re not into it? If they feel like, ‘I don’t want a relationship in this?’ That’s what we’re going to find out. It’s not something that we want to foist upon players.

IGN: There’s not a sort of benefit that’s big enough to make you have to play romantically?

Rob Nelson: Not a particular gameplay benefit that I can think of really. They will remain partners in crime. You will always have the benefit of working together and having each other’s back – whether they’re romantically close or not doesn’t change that. They will still work together. It’s really about what you want for them, their story, and how it plays out. Whether you’ve nurtured the relationship or not will definitely have a bearing on how their story plays out. Which is all really fun stuff to play with because we have so much action available in the open world – robberies to do, gang compounds to hit, and car fences to steal cars for. There’s so much action you can get into. We are really able to have a lot of fun with the missions – some are very high-octane shootouts, car chases, and things like that, while some are more prosaic, domestic things, which are also quite fun. It’s been interesting to see how so much of the team has become quite invested in these characters because of these relatable experiences with a partner.

Right now, we’re in free roam together with Jason and Lucia, which is something that has been an exciting challenge.

IGN: How does their dynamic work? If Jason’s getting into it with someone, which results in violence, does Lucia definitely get involved?

Rob Nelson: She definitely does. Definitely. You can aim your weapon and tell people to get out of their car, and you don’t even have to yank anybody out. But yeah, Jason and Lucia have each other’s back always.

[As the couple reunite, the hold hands and share a cute little kiss. Nelson shows off the Focus mode, which makes a nearby cop glow.]

This is something called ‘Focus’, which is very similar to ‘Eagle Eye’ in Red Dead Redemption 2. You can use it to help you locate things that you want to find on the map – and certainly cops.

The Wanted system in GTA 6 requires that someone witness the crime, or an alarm needs to be set off for it to be reported to the law. One star is not going to be too difficult to get away from. You can see with these little icons on-screen, the police know what we’re driving, so we should just jump out of the vehicle. They also know we’re a couple. You could split up, and that will also help lower the police’s perception of you.

[Jason and Lucia get into a car, making small talk as they do.]

So we can get in this new vehicle, so they won’t know we’re in this car. This will lower the police’s perception of you.

IGN: I’m terrified to think how much dialogue you must have had to write just for Jason and Lucia’s small talk…

Rob Nelson: A terrifying amount! [Laughs] So, it would be smart for us to stay out the streets and let this die down.

We’re in the fashion district now, so we can go and see what we can find. We can bring Jason and Lucia to shop together. I can come in here and if I have heat, purchasing and wearing a new outfit will remove any heat that I have. Jason and Lucia can hold the door for each other.

Very quickly you can start to make Jason and Lucia your own and make them look very different. You can make them go to the hair salon together. You could do a lot of this sort of cosmetic stuff.

IGN: Physical intimacy is a part of any romance or relationship, but games are so bad at it traditionally…

Rob Nelson: Well, we don’t want to be so bad at it. These characters feel very right together – they really do. For anybody that wants to play around with the idea of role-playing their relationship, it’s amazing. So many people on the team have connected with the characters. But physical intimacy is a huge part of a relationship, and so it has to be done right. Like anything that we do, we have to iterate and try things and iterate on it until we figure out what feels right.

IGN: It’s easy to end up in a kind of weird caricature version of it.

Rob Nelson: And we don’t want that. We definitely want to err on the right side of it.

IGN: There’s some mini games you don’t want to see.

Rob Nelson: [Laughs] I think that’s right.

As opposed to GTA 5, where it’s three separate characters who are aligned but living very separate lives, you spawn into this game and often go, ‘Where is she? Where is he? I want to check in. I want to know where they are.’ In life, you generally always know where your partner is. Even if you’re apart, you know roughly where they are and what they’re doing.

So, we had to really find our way through to see how the relationship would feel to play. It took a fair bit of iteration, but now it feels really good, we think, and it’s unlike anything we’ve done. where when playing as one character, you’re that one, and when you’re the other one, you’re the other one. When you bring them together, it feels like you’re a steward of their relationship, and you feel protective of them as a unit. But this is something we did not know when we started, and it really had to be something we felt our way through. But I will say that whether you’re getting in trouble, or you’re running from the cops, or getting in a car, or waiting for the other one – playing as them together feels very cool. It feels like you’re taking care of them, if that’s something you’re into.

IGN: That’s fascinating to me because I think women grow up doing a lot more imaginative play around a couple as an entity as opposed to an individual, so I’m really interested to see it in-game.

Rob Nelson: I have to say it feels great — if you are into it as a concept. And again, don’t bother with it if you aren’t. Up to you.

[Nelson switches up the gameplay to show off the new, more nuanced car theft mechanic.]

So unfortunately I’ve stolen a vehicle with an advanced tracker, which is represented by that red light blinking at the bottom. It means the cops will know where the vehicle is if I’m not driving it at a great enough speed. I may need to just get out of it.

The police don’t know who we are – that’s what those hollow white stars mean. We’ll be fine, as long as we leave the area. The police are going to the site of where we stole the vehicle, but they don’t know what we look like

IGN: You’re already gone…

Rob Nelson: We’re already gone. So again, if you hit and move, you should be able to get away.

IGN: It feels like there are more stakes for everything. Things are more difficult, like stealing the fancier cars. But also, there’s more nuance to how you can get away with it.

Rob Nelson: Yes, absolutely, there is more nuance to how you can get away with things.

IGN: I love the NPCs.

Rob Nelson: You can just walk around and listen to the NPCs. The team has really outdone themselves.

You can go to the gym as Jason and Lucia together. You can go to the gym alone obviously, but if you go together, they’ll both start working out, and you can get a 2-for-1 to manage their stats.

But yeah, I don’t generally like – unless we’re running away from cops or running to do something – jogging ahead of the other character. I like them to be together.

You can call your personal vehicle at any time. All your weapons that you’ve purchased will always be available in the back of your personal vehicle.

IGN: How does social media play a role?

Rob Nelson: We have Snapmatic. You have people that you follow and you can also just browse it.

IGN: Can you post as Jason or Lucia?

Rob Nelson: No, because you’re a couple on the run. You just lurk.

These are all the robbery targets that you can go and use to make money, and that’s very important to the gameplay system loop. You can do that as Jason and Lucia together, or you can do it on your own.

I can switch between Jason and Lucia, and the other one will drive there. So now I switched to the seat, and Jason is driving. He’s driving real fast, and I can sit here while he’s driving.

So, we can go into the cop impound and sneak in and steal that car. We could do that on our own, or we can do that together as both Jason and Lucia.

IGN: One thing a lot of people noticed with the trailer is the ankle tag. Is that an early game thing, so it limits where Lucia can go a bit?

Rob Nelson: The ankle tag is part of the narrative and part of the way we bring Jason and Lucia together.

[The couple pass by a police car impound and Lucia points out that inside is a car someone had ask them to steal.]

I used to be going to go to a store, or a financial institution, or payday mortgage place and attempt to rob it. But we went previous this cop impound lot, and Jason known as it out.

IGN: She’s very good at running in heels.

Rob Nelson: And fighting in heels.

There’s a car fence who told us about this impound lot and they gave us a code to get in the door. So we know the code.

Now that looks like an Infernus to me…

[Nelson gets into the car and starts to make a getaway, although running into a passer-by.]

I’m trying not to run him over. The streets in this game are narrower and more realistic in terms of scale. Which, in addition to all the density of the traffic on the roads, makes driving slightly more challenging and requires a bit of skill. I think it’s fun.

Alright, so this car fence wants this car. I can actually repair this car here because the car fence will give you less money for it if it’s damaged. The car I stole has an advanced tracker so if I drive slow, it pings and the police will know where I am. So you have to drive the car fast.

IGN: If the game is still surprising you, then that’s a good sign.

Rob Nelson: Oh, it is. The game is so big, I don’t know that there’s anybody on the team that knows all of it. There’s so much stuff, so much dialogue that’s regularly hitting the build on an ongoing basis. So I was pleasantly surprised to hear Jason call out the impound lot and thought, ‘Oh, we can do it.’

I’ll try to do a robbery.

[The couple head to a pawn shop in GTA 6’s version of Uber, Ryde Me. In Jason’s POV Nelson heads to the back to look for a safe while Lucia keeps things under control by the door.]

We can ride all the way with this passenger and chat with them. It’s a good way to do fast travel.

IGN: It feels like – even more than Red Dead Redemption 2 even – just being in the world is the point as much as the main story.

Rob Nelson: Yes. Hopefully more than ever, really. We’re trying as much as possible to make it feel like you are these characters, not only on missions and in the story, but in the open world as much as you want. We really pushed that on Red Dead Redemption 2 more than ever before. We did what we could at the time with Michael, Trevor, and Franklin on GTA 5 – you could be in the world as them and get into all sorts of stuff, but you weren’t necessarily doing things in the open world that felt as in sync with their narrative and who they were as characters.

Whereas right here, along with simply exploring, which after all is an enormous a part of all these video games, the participant as Jason and Lucia can at all times be both being profitable to get themselves out of the predicament they discover themselves in or spending time collectively, retaining their relationship sturdy by hanging out collectively or robbing and stealing collectively.

IGN: With Red Dead Redemption 2 as well, there were ways you could change the way a town developed. Are there similar choices in this game?

Rob Nelson: You’re talking about the sort of lumber yard change? The sons building the house with their father? That sort of stuff?

That’s not included as much with this game. It’s just not as big a part of the story. But you can rob pretty much anything. So we can go into this place where you buy headphones, for example, and rob it.

I should really be preparing for this robbery. Like by putting a vehicle out front. But I’m not going to, we’re just going to see what happens.

[Nelson go inside, finds the safe and then tracks down the code for it.]

We found the combo. I have an explosive that would damage some of the take in this safe. But now these cops are here and they’re going to be stacking up out front. Luckily, there’s a back door out here.

IGN: It feels like there are so many choices in this game. In terms of what ending you get or how the game ends up, is it more about lots of little choices, or is it about some key choices?

Rob Nelson: Both. There are lots of choices, big and small. The small ones add up to mean something; some big ones mean a lot in the moment you make them.

There’s a quick way to set waypoints: holding down on the D-pad. This is the fence, and he’s lit up green with a dollar sign now. We have some things we can sell him: jewelry. So we can go there. All of this qualifies as quality time for Jason and Lucia, by the way. Robbing places together, or walking around, holding hands, going to a zoo, studying animals, going scuba diving, parachuting, walking on the beach, kayaking…

IGN: This must be a tough part of the job. Having to demo something while answering questions…

Rob Nelson: I love it!

IGN: So studying animals? I noticed when you pet the dog, one of the options is to ‘study.’ Is that a collection mechanic?

Rob Nelson: Yeah, you can study animals as a collection sort of thing. And just as a way to get more information about them. It’s something we’ve brought over from Red Dead Redemption 2. Just as in Red Dead Redemption 2, there’s so much nature in the game and this provides a way of engaging with the wildlife without necessarily having to shoot it all. Which I love as well.

[Back in the demo, the couple made their escape with the car.]

So we got away! We don’t have heat now. So as long as we don’t act crazy, we should successfully get away.

[Some bad luck means the cops are suddenly in the area, and on the look out for Jason and Lucia.]

The police are searching in this area so we have heat now. So, this is a risk. We could wait for it to die down, change our outfits, or split Jason and Lucia up. There’s a lot of smart things we could do, but I’m not really doing them.

If you split up, you actually… Oh shit! Agh! Shit! Shit!

[In the demo, things are escalating rapidly and the cops are swarming.]

IGN: That was so close!

Rob Nelson: I was just being a total idiot. I should have just yelled at Lucia to take off, and that would’ve taken some heat off.

IGN: As you’re a couple on the run, what happens if you get arrested?

Rob Nelson: If either of you gets arrested, it’s just ‘Busted,’ then it’s a restart, a respawn. As with previous games. You actually haven’t seen me get Busted yet.

[Nelson indicates an icon on the screen.]

So that yellow X means that NPC is incapacitated, so he won’t get back up. This raised my Heat so it was not exactly the smartest thing to do. However, if you want to stay and fight the police, you can.

Now I’ve Adrenaline, which is useful to get out of right here.

IGN: What would Lucia be doing right now?

Rob Nelson: She’s getting away. If I ever get away, I’ll text her and go, ‘Hey, are you OK? Did you shake those cops?’ But this does not look like something I’ll likely get away from.

So, you can still have the classic, quintessential GTA experience. For me, it depends on the way I’m playing. I like what you said about, ‘I have a save in the middle of Red Dead…’ GTA 6 is very much a game where you can play it in very different ways, depending on your mood or the playthrough you are doing. I sometimes will play it like what we just did there, wild and chaotic, but it depends on your playstyle. I could have gotten away from the police there if I wasn’t trying to get through to show you. But these characters and this story really lends itself to putting yourself in their shoes.

IGN: Was that the North Star when you were sitting down, the big thing on the white board? “Choice?”

Rob Nelson: I think choice, certainly, yeah, was a big thing on the proverbial white board.

Lots of people ask, “How do you consider satire and what angle to make use of?” But satire is not usually the first thing that we think about; it’s something that develops. The first thing we think about is where are we going to set it. OK, Miami and Florida… Vice City and Leonida.

Then we go there and start meeting with as many different people as we can. We start figuring out what sorts of experiences we want the player to have, and what places we want them to go, and what types of people we want them to meet. Then we figure out what’s a good character set to take the player through that.

Those are the big things. Then we ask, ‘What do we want to improve upon that we did before?’ Certainly, choice. Another big thing is trying to connect who you are in the narrative with who you are in the open world as much as possible, so it feels like one singular experience.

IGN: The game is almost the world, and the other parts slot in afterwards…

Rob Nelson: I really hope that there’s something in it for everybody and that if you’re not really interested in engaging with the narrative, you can still get the game and get in and have a lot of fun pretty quickly. But if you are interested in the narrative, it’s something that benefits from spending a bit of time. You get the most out of the narrative if you put time into the game and just get lost in the world, not necessarily by chasing from mission to mission to mission to finish the story as fast as possible.

I think that’s something that happened in Red Dead Redemption 2 a little bit. People get the game, and they want to finish the story and know what happens. I understand that, but that game ended up having a lot of legs in terms of people revisiting it. It makes me so happy to hear that people play Red Dead Redemption 2 multiple times. I believe that GTA 6 is built for that as well.

IGN: I think with Red Dead Redemption 2, there were some people that went back who almost hadn’t realized [there was so much more than the story], because they were used to playing maybe less expansive games. So ‘I’ll just burn through the story and that’s all there is.’ And there was almost a whole other world…

Rob Nelson: There is a whole other world in Red Dead Redemption 2, yes. GTA 6 is very much like that. There’s a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we’re not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well. If you take a bit of time and explore, you will be rewarded – a lot. It’s a big map, a very big map. This is where we started from – Jason’s little house.

IGN: It’s always fascinating – you find this balance between freedom and world building. But then, also a filmmaker mentality of still being able to tell stories that are very cinematic and specific…

Rob Nelson: Well, thank you. We are always trying to find that balance between freedom and storytelling, as you say. It is a challenge and sometimes when you are trying to create a specific or hopefully compelling narrative, the narrative aspect does need to take precedence at times – at least for us it does.

To move the narrative forward in a believable way, you have to hit these beats, and so in those cases we have to kind of guide the experience. But with this game we have made a very conscious effort to open things up where possible, without compromising the quality of the experience.

That first mission that you saw in the [Netflix preview] video where they’re in the tower block trying to get out – there are multiple routes out of that tower block. Or the mission where they meet Raul and he gets in the back of the car – the first bit is on rails because you, the player as Jason, are shooting and Lucia’s driving, but then you switch and you’re driving. There is an optimal route that you’re told to get out, but if you don’t follow it, you can still get out – the mission is essentially a police chase. Anything where a mission can become systemic and it’s a wanted level or robbery system – we try to make it so that it doesn’t feel inconsistent with how the game works in the open world.

IGN: So finding that balance – because a mission with too much choice stops being satisfying?

Rob Nelson: It can sometimes be hard to keep the quality as high as you want if you allow for too much freedom or too much choice on missions, but we are really trying wherever we can. And hopefully opening up missions wherever we can so that when appropriate, they feel like what you are doing is similar to what you do in the open world, where you have a ton of choice. At the same time, we are pushing very hard to raise the level of quality with everything that can happen in the open world and tying a lot of what you can do there into what you’re doing as part of the overall narrative in the hopes that we can continue to try and blur the lines between different types of ‘content.’ We are very excited about some of what we have going on now in the open world with how it reacts to you and the systems we have working together. We have a lot of emergent, natural-feeling stuff happening pretty often now as you roam around the world. That was truly emergent for me when we drove past that car park and Jason suggested we do that job – I hadn’t actually heard that dialogue from him myself yet. And it worked – I was going to a pawn shop, then Jason said, ‘Should we go do this?’ as we drove by and I changed my mind.

And one of the coolest things in GTA 6 is how much fun it can be to be with your partner. You’ll have seen it in the video and it will be interesting to see if people pick up on it. Because, yes, the video showcases three pretty action-heavy missions intercut with loads of other things you can do, but in just one little sequence we show a couple of robberies, which represents a HUGE amount of what you can and need to be doing in this game in between story missions.

You see Lucia put on a mask outside of a pawn shop, walk in, and some guy gives her side-eye and then slides off like, ‘Ooh I’m going to get away from here.’ She goes in the door, and Jason says, ‘Let’s keep it clean.’ Then it cuts to them in a jewelry store where Lucia is fighting a guy for a gun, and she goes, ‘I’m watching you!’

Then it cuts to Jason waiting on a bike outside a store, and Lucia gets on it as the player, and Jason drives off while Lucia flips off the cops. The partner can drive pretty well, so you can often have the partner drive to get you away from the cops, and you, as the player, can be shooting behind. Sometimes when it really works and you blow out their tires and the front car goes flipping around, blocking the cars behind it, blocking them all, or when the partner drives you to beat a train at the last second, blocking them off, it can feel like you’re playing a scripted mission, which is totally new for us.

IGN: It feels like any other time there’s been that kind of companion in a game, it’s always a bit awkward, whereas these feel like two equally capable, playable, interesting characters instead of like, ‘Well, this is the main character.’

Rob Nelson: Oh no, no, that is definitely not the case in this. As the narrative unfolds, we’re quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character. After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of – do we do more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now? But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each and, therefore, player connection with those characters.

So we decided to step in this direction of two characters in a relationship. But then the question became, “How do you make gamers really feel like, ‘I love them both?'” Chemistry is a notoriously hard thing to do in any sort of entertainment. Either the characters and the actors that embody them have it or they don’t.

Everyone involved worked at that pretty hard. I think we’ve bought it. I believe we’ve bought sufficient response inside our crew internally to the place they really feel nice as people and collectively.

IGN: It feels authentic. It feels like a real couple. I’m excited to have that dynamic in a game beyond just a romance option. This feels very different. I think people are going to be really surprised, but in a good way.

Rob Nelson: I hope so. What do you think is going to be surprising?

IGN: I think because people aren’t used to having that couple dynamic. Also, the two characters being so even and being able to do so much and having so many choices in the world.

Rob Nelson: I hope they’re ready for it. I hope they like what we are trying to do with it.

IGN: I think they’ll be excited. And I think as well that one thing everyone will agree on is how exciting and deep the world is.

Rob Nelson: Yeah, how deep the world is can’t be denied. The team has done an incredible job pulling that together and making it feel consistent. That has been and continues to be an exciting challenge. We aren’t quite there yet, and we will take every moment we can get to polish things!

IGN: I did a poll [on IGN], and we asked what our readers were really excited to know more about, and they were obsessed with the world. Almost 50% said the world. They really are excited to get in there and discover things.

Rob Nelson: Well, you’ve only seen a tiny, tiny slice of it in the city. I didn’t even get to the beach – you just can’t get to it all. But hey, that leaves some stuff for you to discover.

IGN: They’re cultural moments, the GTAs.

Rob Nelson: No pressure. [Laughs] I try not to think about it. You’re aware of it, of course. But I think we just have to try and make something that we feel is innovating on what we’ve done previously, evolving it while still making it feel familiar.

IGN: I like that the little bits of satire are in there, but it feels a little more heartfelt maybe than they have in the past.

Rob Nelson: That’s a question a lot of people ask: how do you deal with satire in today’s world? I think there’s always stuff to satirize. As long as humans are humans, other humans will figure out ways to satirize what we do. For us, because we work on such a long development cycle, we have to not jump on stuff and instead choose our angle of approach carefully and decide what things are going to be a bit more timeless. We’re not a TV show coming out every week or every month. We have to be careful that what we’re choosing to satirize is not going to feel dated in a weird way.

I believe these broader issues are OK to satirize, however very particular political points or memes will date quick. Even the way in which our characters converse, we give it some thought rather a lot in order that they don’t seem to be utilizing extraordinarily up to date slang. Even although our characters are a sure age, they should really feel considerably timeless.

IGN: I think as well, anything like slang, it immediately cuts out a large age demographic.

Rob Nelson: Exactly, exactly. Jason and Lucia as characters have rich backstories that we sometimes explicitly talk about and sometimes just allude to. I think there is enough detail there if you want to pay attention, but we also have purposely left them with some room for interpretation so that hopefully the connection can be enhanced between the player and these characters. That is maybe as important as it has ever been for these characters in particular because I think for this story to work for you, for you to buy into this relationship, you have to be able to connect with them in some way. Hopefully a good number of people will feel like they can do that.

IGN: Some people have grown up with GTA as kind of a cultural reference point, but this will be the first one they’ll have been around for the release of it.

Rob Nelson: Yeah, that’s crazy to think of – wow. For sure.

IGN: It seems similar to Red Dead Redemption 2 – people are going to be discovering things in this game for a really long time.

Rob Nelson: I hope so. There’s plenty in there.

IGN: People are going to have a lot of reactions to the trailer.

Rob Nelson: I hope so.

IGN: They’re going to be going through it with a fine-tooth comb…

Rob Nelson: [Laughs] Yes, I know. We’re trying our best to make it as clean as possible.

IGN: Is that a crazy thing? Knowing that because it’s you guys, every frame is going to be…

Rob Nelson: It’s a hard thing. As much pressure as we feel externally, I don’t think it can compare to the pressure we put on ourselves as a team. Everyone wants things to be perfect. We are nervous! Nervous, of course, but also excited to see how people respond to this video and then ultimately the game. It is definitely a step forward in all respects for us – the size of the world and how deep it feels. It’s a bit of a shock when you get in there and you see the density of the traffic, the density of population, and the fidelity of their responses to you.

IGN: I went back and fired up GTA 5 just to go back in there, and yeah, seeing this, it’s wild, the difference. Because I remember being like, ‘Oh, that was so manic and the world was so full.’ And it was, but not like this.

Rob Nelson: Yeah, I think with RDR2, we finally had the team and the tech and then took the time we needed to push the idea of making a fully realized consistent-feeling world further than we ever had. With that game we took the time necessary to take advantage of that generation of hardware to maximize the quality of our open-world population, design, and gameplay so that when you were riding from here to there in-game, you were constantly getting distracted and pulled in different directions. And then you could really get lost as that character in that place.

That’s when, to me, these games can feel magical and create a sense of wonder that the world is alive – and you get these little shivers of ‘What’s happening?’ GTA 6 is a continuation of our team pushing in this direction – doing everything we possibly can to create the largest, deepest, most densely populated and complex world we have ever built for people to get lost in.

IGN: It’s one of the things I loved in Red Dead Redemption 2, but you also have a lot of open space in that game.

Rob Nelson: Yes, the density of GTA 6 has been an exciting challenge, but that’s also part of the reason why our team has doubled in size.

IGN: Anything else you wanted to talk about?

Rob Nelson: I just really wanted to show that in addition to what we hope will be a very compelling story for people to get involved in, there is a very deep, vast, incredible world to explore and get involved with as these two characters – apart, or together – however you want to play it. And finally, even though there are some new systems at play, it’s still very much Grand Theft Auto.

Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and an elder millennial. She’s been an expert nerd since 2006 when she bought her begin on Official PlayStation Magazine within the UK, and has since labored for Video gamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. She loves horror, horror motion pictures, horror video games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and her Love and Deepspace boyfriends.