Rockstar Games gave GTA 6s’ developers so much freedom to add cool details that not even the studio’s top executives are aware of everything in the game.
The latest behind-the-scenes information on GTA 6 comes from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who expanded upon his trip to the Rockstar North offices in Edinburgh, Scotland, after previously sharing other highlights last week. One of the more noteworthy bits shared in his 18-minute video’s runtime is that the team who spent a decade or so making next month’s Grand Theft Auto game had quite a bit of freedom to add details simply because they thought they might be cool.
Schreier said he’d guess that “not even top developers” at Rockstar know every tiny detail added to Vice City and its wealth of NPCs. He noted that giving large teams the autonomy to flesh out every street corner isn’t too uncommon for open-world games. In the case of GTA 6 and its huge budget and lengthy development time, that means players will likely still be discovering new details even years down the road.
Schreier shared a quote from Rockstar’s Aaron Garbut, who said, “There’s no one person that has this whole thing in their head.” That’s probably not too new for the GTA team, with the video also recalling one specific detail from Red Dead Redemption 2.
Players may remember that horses found through the cowboy simulator had testicles with realistic physics. The thing fans still love to pass around to this day is the fact that they even shrink in colder weather.
Garbut mentioned that this specific feature (if you can call it that) was not something Rockstar had on some big list of details to include in Red Dead Redemption 2, nor was it something the team was ever asked to spend extra time on. Instead, the shrinking horse testicles, like many other details in the 2018 Western sandbox game, was something that someone happened to have enough time to work on and bring to life. It’s this same strategy that fans can expect to see implemented in GTA 6.
Schreier’s video also revealed that Rockstar spent quite a bit of time trying to do away with the weapon wheel it had leaned on in past games. Worried that slapping a game-y wheel on Jason and Lucia would remind players of what they can’t carry on their person, they attempted to create a new system to replace it. The team then spent “months, if not years, trying a million different things.” Examples listed include trays, webs, and UI updates for the formula before eventually, as we’ve seen, tossing all of those ideas out the window and going back to the traditional weapon wheel.
Meanwhile, as one might imagine could be the case over the course of developing a major video game, Rockstar’s long path to launch wasn’t without its roadblocks. Schreier said the “dark moments” of development saw the GTA 6 team struggle between the years of about 2019 to 2022. He said Rockstar’s desire to balance the realism of Red Dead Redemption gameplay with the traditionally more arcade-y systems GTA is known for was the driving factor.
It was during this time that some team members felt they were just “treading water,” leading the project to shed some designers before the vision really started coming together toward the beginning of 2023. According to Schreier’s reporting, some Rockstar artists have been working on GTA 6 since 2015, just two years after the launch of GTA 5. It was this same year the team started taking trips to Miami to plot out their reimagined Vice City.
Now, after all this time, GTA 6 is exactly one month away (!) from its November 19, 2026, release date. To help hype up everyone who has waited 13 years to see if it was worth the long, long wait, Rockstar has taken over Miami. One recent example from its marketing push includes a collection of cars ripped straight out of the game.
For more, you can check out new details and screenshots from the GTA 6 launch trailer. Rockstar has insisted it won’t take another eight years to make its next game, but as we wait during these last 30 days for this one, you can read IGN’s interview with Rob Nelson.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
