The promotional blitz for Grand Theft Auto 6 continues rolling out, with the latest example being a cover feature in Love, a fashion magazine that only publishes two issues a year. I guess you’ve got to reach the people who don’t know what the Miami Heat is somehow.
One of the things the feature focuses on is the satirical side of Grand Theft Auto, mentioning that in GTA 6, alongside radio talk shows and ads, you might overhear a robovoiced phonecall for a political campaign. The world will be full of real-world details, but amplified.
“It needs to wash over you when you’re sprinting down the busiest street in the city, hearing snatches of a hundred different conversations as you go,” according to James Horton, whose job title is writing director: open world. “If you shift your focus onto something new, it’s going to fill the frame, and it’s going to push back.”
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“If you are going to put all this effort into creating a version of today’s world, it has to be more over the top, more insane, more in your face,” Rupert Humphries, senior vice president of narrative said. “Otherwise, you could just go outside and live in the real world.”
GTA 5 was already making fun of how invasive social media has become and how people don’t believe what their doctors tell them. Even GTA’s own voice actors have pointed out that the world’s so weird now it’s difficult to parody. Rockstar is determined to try, though. “There is a big focus on not just holding up a mirror, but on making everything satirical, larger than life, and more grotesque”, Humphries said.
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“Sometimes you need things to feel realistic to help with immersion, and conversely, sometimes you need to forego realism in favour of what’s convenient for the player”, said Rob Nelson, head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North.
The other focus of the article is on Lucia, GTA’s first fully voiced woman protagonist, and on her relationship with co-star Jason. “We wanted both protagonists to be vulnerable, tough, flawed, right sometimes, wrong sometimes, able to learn from each other,” game writer Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern said. “That’s what we felt made them authentic, and a great team.”
“When you are focusing on writing a fully realised person with their own wants,” added game writer Alexa D’Agostino, “you’re going to get something perfectly imperfect—with clichés, but also undeniably real.”