GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2: what Rockstar carried over from its last game

GTA 6 is the first Grand Theft Auto since Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar’s 2018 western, and the developers keep bringing it up themselves. In his long interviews with IGN and Famitsu, Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, mentioned RDR2 more often than GTA 5. He told Famitsu he’d be delighted if players could feel both the similarities between the two games and how things have evolved.

Why RDR2 matters so much here

Work on GTA 6 started in 2015, when it was code-named Project Americas and staff made their first research trip to Miami. Then it was pushed back for years because RDR2 needed the whole company (fact, from Bloomberg’s making-of story). Nelson told IGN that RDR2 was where Rockstar “finally had the team and the tech” to build a fully realized, consistent world, and that GTA 6 continues in the same direction.

Safehouses that feel like camp

The most direct comparison is about safehouses. “The Safehouses [in GTA 6] are probably closer to the camps in RDR2 than they are to safehouses in any GTA game before,” Nelson told IGN, both in how interactive they are and in how much they feel like home. The first one isn’t even theirs: Jason and Lucia are staying in someone else’s house.

He told Famitsu that the hideouts change as the story moves from chapter to chapter, and compared them to the camps in RDR2, where everyone living there has a daily schedule. That includes the other protagonist: after a switch, they might be at the safehouse or out on their own.

Talking to people

Nelson says the system for interacting with people “is returning and evolved from Red Dead Redemption 2.” With your gun holstered, holding L2 no longer means aiming: you can greet someone or antagonize them, and R2 draws your weapon. GTA 6 adds eavesdropping. Pedestrians talk among themselves, but stand too close or follow them too long and they’ll notice and ask what you want.

Another idea that started in RDR2 is that you aren’t the only dangerous person around. “The world will act upon you as well as you acting upon the world,” Nelson said. In earlier GTAs everyone except the police ran from you. In Leonida people have impulses of their own, and some of them will come at you first.

Wanted only with a witness

Nelson told Famitsu that the wanted system was completely overhauled. In earlier GTAs you could get stars for a crime nobody saw. In RDR2 you weren’t wanted unless someone saw you, and that rule moved into GTA 6: a witness, an alarm or a camera has to report the crime. The stars, their colors and the icons under them are covered in our guide to police and wanted levels.

Criminal Profile instead of Honor

In RDR2, Arthur Morgan had an Honor meter: good deeds raised it, killing and stealing lowered it. Explaining why GTA 6 has two protagonists instead of GTA 5’s three, Nelson told Famitsu that the team had worried a single lead in RDR2 might feel strange to players. Instead, many became deeply attached to Arthur, largely, he thinks, because they could shape his story through choices and the Honor system.

GTA 6 has its own tracker, the Criminal Profile, which records what sort of criminal you are. It shares some ideas with Honor, but Nelson told IGN it’s a different system: there’s no right or wrong way to play, and consistent behavior changes how the world reacts and how the story plays out. The store discounts that high Honor earned in RDR2 are gone. Nelson called that mechanic too game-like.

Cars you manage like horses

Nelson compared the garage to managing horses in RDR2. Early on it holds three vehicles, so to make a new car your personal vehicle you have to sell one first. A personal vehicle also stores your weapons. Stolen cars show up on the radar with a gray icon and stay with you for a while, then vanish when you restart the game, just like the horses you could steal and temporarily keep in RDR2. More on cars in stealing and driving in GTA 6.

Focus and Eagle Eye

Nelson described the Focus ability as “very similar to ‘Eagle Eye’ in Red Dead Redemption 2.” It helps you find things on the map and spot police officers, who no longer appear on the minimap. El País compared it to a different RDR2 skill, Dead Eye, because Focus also slows time to help you aim.

Animals and nature

You can study animals again. Nelson said it was brought over from RDR2 as a way to engage with wildlife “without necessarily having to shoot it all.” Leonida has more than 170 species, some of them Rare, Discoverable or Legendary. The full picture is in our article on GTA 6’s 170 animal species.

You can just exist

When IGN’s interviewer mentioned keeping an RDR2 save just to load up and hang around in, Nelson said GTA 6 has that too: “you can just exist.” Every one of the many hair salons has signature styles alongside the standard ones, and, as in RDR2, the idea is that open-world activities like these happen naturally.

Missions and free roam are also tied closer together. Nelson told Famitsu that RDR2 brought the two somewhat closer and GTA 6 integrates them fully: story missions alone don’t pay enough to move the story forward, so you earn money in the open world. He also said he loves that people play RDR2 several times, and that GTA 6 is built for that as well.

What changed or didn’t make it

• The world changes less. In RDR2 you could come back to a town and find new buildings finished. Nelson told IGN that this is in GTA 6 much less because it isn’t as big a part of the story. In return, you can rob almost any shop.
• The scale. Rockstar told The New York Times that Leonida is three times the playable area of RDR2 (GameSpot). GTA 6 has well over 600,000 animations, against about 300,000 in RDR2 and 55,000 in GTA 5 (details).
• No first-person mode. RDR2 can be played in first person, while previews say GTA 6 has no full first-person mode.
• Convenience over realism, sometimes. Rockstar cut a system for buying groceries to restock the fridge because it made things too complicated. Nelson said the team went through the same trial and error between realism and convenience on RDR2.

Do you need to play RDR2 first?

No. They’re different series: RDR2 follows Dutch van der Linde’s gang in 1899, while GTA 6 follows Jason and Lucia in Leonida, a modern-day Florida. If you loved how RDR2 let you slow down and live in its world, a lot of GTA 6 will feel familiar. If this is your first Grand Theft Auto, start with our guide for GTA newcomers.