A new GTA 6 screenshot and development information has been released via a French fashion magazine. We previously got some quotes and screenshots from a preview which we reported on here and now the mag is out so there’s even more!
On Monday, issue 27 of LOVE magazine released with an exclusive article, cover and images of Grand Theft Auto VI. The article interviews various GTA VI developers and they share some interesting development details and how they view the story.
Writing For Rockstar
Let’s now move on to the story. Alexa D’Agostino, a writer at Rockstar, tells us how she wrote Lucia:
“When it came to writing Lucia, I thought of the women I know—my mother was an immigrant who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, close to Lucia’s hometown of Liberty City. I thought about the way she raised me: rowdy, kind, but not to take any shit. I related a lot to Lucia and writing her came very naturally to me. There are many badass women like her, just as there are many men like Jason. We just focused on capturing that. When you are focusing on writing a fully realised person with their own wants, you’re going to get something perfectly imperfect—with clichés, but also undeniably real. That’s how you get a woman that can stand tall next to the likes of Arthur Morgan and Niko Bellic.”
Alexa D’Agostino, Writer, Rockstar Games
Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern tells LOVE that the actress who portrays Lucia “brought a lot to the character.” Whilst we have a good idea of who that person is, Rockstar will won’t confirm it. Lucia needed to be “tough, badass, cool” and this actress allowed them to “create an incredible Grand Theft Auto protagonist.”. Rockstar say they wanted both protagonists to be vulnerable, tough, flawed, right sometimes, wrong sometimes, able to learn from each other, and that’s what we felt made them authentic, and a great team.”
In contrast, Raul embodies Vice City and all the local and criminal knowledge that Jason and Lucia don’t have when they arrive in Vice City. Rockstar said they needed ” an older mentor character” and that’s exactly his role.
Rupert Humphries, Senior Vice President of Narrative at Rockstar Games goes on to talk about Leonida and making the world feel alive. For example, it is “filled with all the characters and culture wars necessary to make it feel alive.” It isn’t just about meeting various NPCs in person but getting to hear about them. The game will have you “see a sign for an election, receive a robocall from a campaign, or hear a commercial on the radio.” This expands to “great political talk shows on the radio”.
Making It Far More Real
Where Humphries calls Red Dead Redemption 2 was “a historical recreation”, GTA VI was built using “a lot of the same tools” but making “everything satirical, larger than life, and more grotesque.” There is some “holding up a mirror” and looking at the real world but there’s still the GTA crazy in there.
To make things more real yet satirical, Rockstar have “an amazing team of writers and creatives” and an entire team of pedestrian dialogue writers in LA. There’s also a group of advertising and comedy writers across New York, LA, and London.
“It’s a team from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life, but we all share a sense of humour and a desire to have a bit of fun with the ridiculousness of humans and the media and advertising. And none of us see it as background! It’s all part of the tapestry of the game and creates the experience of living in this wild world. All the “background noise” that makes the city and the world come to life”
Technical Writing
Writing for a game like this isn’t just putting a script together. James Horton who writes for the open world said “there are immense technical challenges in getting a world like that to work.” It is actually a “profoundly technical” job because there are so many game systems to connect. The player will have a relationship with the in-game world but also all of the NPCs. Hundreds of writers were assembled in a large group to achieve a new level of realism.
“We dreamed a lot bigger this time around. We started a new writing team in LA with pedestrian dialogue as their sole focus and sat them alongside a dedicated production team with the same mandate. There are no shortcuts when it comes to building a world like this: it’s a question of giving the right people the resources they need to build something that’s not only vast and varied as a whole, but where every part rings true no matter how small it is, or how closely you look at it. 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; and it needs to be totally convincing if you decide to stop and pay close attention to any one of those conversations.”
In other related news, a mural is being painted plus Rockstar have teamed up with the Miami Heat for a special collaboration! Learn all about it here.
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