The release window forGrand Theft Auto 6is drawing closer, with fans waiting with great anticipation for the next batch of revealed information for the project. Players are still relatively in the dark in terms of information officially revealed by Rockstar, yet this has not stopped a lot of lofty expectations already forming around the game featuring some massive evolutions of core mechanics that the franchise has previously portrayed.
Fans are expecting the playable area ofGrand Theft Auto 6to be much larger than its predecessor, for example, with a much wider range of side content potentially being introduced in the way of things like hunting. Of course, the weapons of anyGrand Theft Autorelease are massively important, and a lot of the expectations forGTA 6are contingent upon the game going bigger and bolder than ever before with its own arsenal of firearms. Of course, Rockstar set an excellent precedent for more realistic weapon mechanics with 2018’sRed Dead Redemption 2, thoughGrand Theft Auto 6may be better off keeping things simple with its own guns.
Less Might Be More with Grand Theft Auto 6’s Approach to Weapons
Guns are a staple ofGrand Theft Auto’s core gameplayexperience, withGrand Theft Auto 5featuring a wide range of different firearms with a level of customization that the franchise had not seen before prior to that point. While some fans have called for improvements to be made to the actual shooting mechanics of the franchise inGrand Theft Auto 6, the overall approach thatGTA 5took with the design and availability of weapons seems better off left untouched.
Crucially,Grand Theft Auto 5did not attempt to feature hyperrealistic portrayals of real-world guns throughout its single-player and online modes, giving a much greater level of freedom to Rockstar in terms of the overall variety of weapons the game eventually ended up including. This has been best evidenced in the massivelysuccessful post-launch life ofGrand Theft Auto Online, which has gone on to feature a long list of wacky weapons that would feel more out of place if the series took a more hyper-focused approach of realism with its arsenal.
While the guns ofGrand Theft Auto 6’s single-player story should still be grounded, it is expected that its own online mode will eventually be quite ambitious in what it will allow players to do, makingGTA 5an excellent blueprint to follow in this regard. Of course, some players are also expectingGrand Theft Auto 6to lean into the morerealistic mechanics of firearms thatRed Dead Redemption 2featured, but this would likely end up being another misstep forGTA 6.
While nothing is currently confirmed, current theories suggest thatGrand Theft Auto 6will release its online mode as a separate title at launch, emulating the distinct releases ofGrand Theft Auto 5andGrand Theft Auto Online.
Grand Theft Auto’s High Octane Worlds Do Not Need Hyper-Real Weapons
Red Dead Redemption 2drew criticism as well as praise for its focus on realism, with things like clothing having status effects in certain environments, as well as the gun-wear mechanics that necessitated consistent cleaning of weapons to maintain things like accuracy.Grand Theft Auto 6’s modern setting puts much less importance on its guns being an overwhelmingly important feature compared toRDR2’s Wild West story, and things like wear-and-tear forGTA 6’s weapons may only serve to bloat the game’s core experience.
The crazy sandbox worlds thattheGTAfranchise often portrays are the key to its success, and a focus on more realistic mechanics will likely only dampen the pick-up-and-play reputation that makesGrand Theft Autoso addictive and widely accessible. Of course,Grand Theft Auto 6still needs to do a lot to exceed the record-breaking success ofGTA 5, but it seems clear that there are many other avenues of expansion away from the franchise’s approach to guns that would provide much more sensible ways of achieving this.
