Rockstar Spent Years Trying to Kill GTA 6's Weapon Wheel: 8 New Details From Jason Schreier's Rockstar North Visit
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier has shared the GTA 6 details that didn't fit in his making-of feature. Rockstar wanted a Red Dead-style limited loadout and spent months, maybe years, trying to replace the weapon wheel before going back to it. The roads are narrower than GTA 5's on purpose, some artists have been on the map since 2015, and nobody at Rockstar holds the whole game in their head.
Bloomberg's Jason Schreier spent a full day interviewing Rockstar's top developers in Edinburgh for his GTA 6 making-of feature, and not everything fit. On October 19 he posted an 18-minute video to his YouTube channel with the leftovers, and some of them are better than half the GTA 6 news this month. The biggest: Rockstar spent months, possibly years, trying to replace the weapon wheel, then put it back.
If you missed the main story, our Bloomberg breakdown covers Project Americas, the Los Angeles NPC studio and the two delays. Here is what is new in the video.
1. Rockstar tried to get rid of the weapon wheel, then kept it
According to Rob Nelson, one of the game's three heads of development, Rockstar wanted GTA 6's weapons to work more like Red Dead Redemption 2's. Instead of carrying an entire armoury and pulling out a rocket launcher whenever you like, you would carry a limited loadout at any one time.
That raised a design problem. A traditional weapon wheel with empty slots, the thinking went, would keep reminding players of everything they couldn't carry. So the team spent months, if not years, trying alternatives: trays, webs and other UI layouts, and even no wheel at all. After all of that, the final game uses a weapon wheel again. Schreier's point is that this is how game development often goes: years of iteration that end where they started.
Rockstar hasn't said exactly how many weapons you can carry at once, or spelled out the final rules. But coming from the people who made it, this is a strong sign that GTA 6 is moving away from the bottomless pockets of GTA 5.
2. Some artists have been on GTA 6's map since 2015
Rockstar began researching Miami and planning the map in 2015, and the map is always the first thing it plans on these games. Over 2015 and 2016, most of the company was moved onto Red Dead Redemption 2, but not all of it: a few artists kept working on GTA 6's map the whole time. Some of them have now been on the same game for more than 11 years.
3. The roads are narrower than GTA 5's, on purpose
Aaron Garbut, Rockstar North's art director and another head of development, told Schreier that GTA 6's roads are significantly narrower than GTA 5's. Los Santos's wide streets made it easy to weave through traffic, which Schreier compares to a racing game. GTA 6 goes the other way, with narrower roads and denser traffic, a choice Rockstar made at the very start.
It had knock-on effects. Narrower roads mean more buildings packed around them, and Garbut said decisions like that come back to bite you later. A lot of what those long-serving artists built was the city that fills the extra space. If it plays the way it sounds, driving through Vice City will feel a lot tighter than tearing across Los Santos.
4. Red Dead 2's way of talking to strangers started as one prototype
This one is about Red Dead 2, but it explains where GTA 6's world comes from. Around 2014 or 2015, Rockstar's vice president of animation, Mark Tennant, built a prototype in which aiming at someone was no longer the only option: you could choose to greet or antagonise them instead. Phil Hooker, the third head of development, was reluctant to show it to Nelson, knowing how ambitious Nelson gets. Nelson saw it anyway, and loved it.
That prototype grew into Red Dead 2's whole system for interacting with strangers without drawing a gun. Schreier says he doesn't know how deep GTA 6's version goes, but expects some way to deal with pedestrians that isn't shooting them.
5. The Netflix Extended Look was the marketing boss's idea
August's 27-minute Extended Look premiere on Netflix came from Mark Adamson, Rockstar's head of marketing, who wanted something different from the usual gameplay walkthroughs. The cut was put together in New York. Head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe teared up watching it in a dark room. Then the whole company had to be sold on polishing gameplay specifically for a Netflix showcase. Schreier says the good news is that, unlike plenty of polished demos in the industry, the work wasn't wasted.
6. A handful of art producers became 65
Rockstar went from about 2,400 staff in 2018 to about 4,700, and a big part of how it managed that was hiring producers. Garbut told Schreier the art production team on GTA 5 was five or six people. On GTA 6 it is 65.
All that tracking lets Rockstar estimate more accurately how long a task will take, which matters for crunch. When a two-week job is scheduled as one week, the artist works overtime to hit it, and then one week becomes the expectation for next time. Better estimates break that cycle, though Schreier notes some developers see layers of production as bureaucracy.
7. The Miami research trips got colourful
Rockstar had a couple of people working full-time in Miami, though it never opened an office there, despite some staff pushing for one. Teams went on police ride-alongs, visited places developers described as scary, and, as Rockstar has told LOVE magazine before, ended up in a helicopter hovering over a Beyoncé concert, a story in our LOVE magazine piece.
Jonathon Ashcroft, Rockstar's senior vice president for technology, spent his 40th birthday at a Miami nightclub with fellow Scots who were busy studying the lighting while everyone else partied. He also told Schreier that once locals knew who they were talking to, they couldn't wait to share every crime they or their friends had ever committed.
8. Nobody at Rockstar knows the whole game
Garbut's closing line is the one fans will hold on to: "There's no one person that has this whole thing in their head." Rockstar gives individual developers room to add details they think are cool. Schreier's example is the famous Red Dead 2 detail of horses' anatomy reacting to the weather, which was on no feature list; someone simply had the time and the idea.
His prediction: when GTA 6 comes out on November 19, the inevitable videos rounding up the coolest details players missed will surprise even Rockstar's leads.
FAQ
Does GTA 6 have a weapon wheel?
Yes. According to Jason Schreier's reporting from Rockstar's leads, the team spent months or years trying alternatives, including no wheel at all, before settling on a weapon wheel again.
Can you carry every weapon at once in GTA 6?
Rockstar wanted a more limited, Red Dead Redemption 2-style loadout, according to Rob Nelson. It hasn't said exactly how many weapons you can carry.
Are GTA 6's roads narrower than GTA 5's?
Yes. Aaron Garbut told Schreier they are significantly narrower, with denser traffic, which meant building more around them.
How long has GTA 6 been in development?
Planning began in 2015, and a few artists have worked on the map since then, more than 11 years. Most of the company joined after Red Dead Redemption 2 shipped in 2018.
