'GTA 6 Should be Smaller and More Compact,' Says Former Rockstar Games Dev
One former Rockstar Games developer believes GTA 6 should have a smaller map than Grand Theft Auto V.
Though Grand Theft Auto VI hasn't even been officially announced yet, it is definitely one of the most anticipated upcoming games. Various leaks reveal that the game will offer a large open world. One of Rockstar Games' studio veterans believes however, that this is not such a good idea at all.
That developer is Tony Gowland, who worked on such installments of GTA as Liberty City Stories, Vice City Stories or Chinatown Wars, as well as the first Red Dead Redemption. He believes that Grand Theft Auto VI would benefit from a smaller, but more attraction-filled map. As he explains, the early installments of the series had this approach, making the exploration of these maps more memorable.
On the one hand, it's not hard to understand thedeveloper's arguments. Many of today's open worlds are so huge that few of the included locations are truly memorable, especially since we often spend only one or two missions in a given location.
On the other hand, it's unlikely that Rockstar Games will return to smaller maps. The studio has such a reputation that fans expect the developers to raise the bar once again - not only in terms of the level of detail, but also the size of the world. Players would be sorely disappointed if the map in GTA 6 was smaller than in the fifth. The studio has made such a move in the past - GTA 4 was smaller than San Andreas, but it was due to a huge leap in technology, and even so there was no shortage of people criticizing the decision.
There is another, much more practical reason why the world in Grand Theft Auto VI must be big - the network mode. It's GTA Online that makes "The 5" sell like hotcakes to this day. So, without a doubt, multiplayer will be a key element of the sixth installment, so the map must be big enough not to bore players for years of play.
