On 27 August Rockstar shows Grand Theft Auto VI properly: an extended look premieres on Netflix, and straight after it the embargoes lift on previews from the outlets that were taken into the studio. Which means everyone will be talking about the mechanics at once tomorrow.
Here is what has been collected so far. Some of these mechanics have already been picked apart in the leaked clips, and I mark where that is the case. The rest comes from preview material circulating in the community ahead of the show, and that is worth keeping in mind: until tomorrow there is no official confirmation for any of it.
Combat: you do not have to shoot to kill
- Killing in a firefight is optional. An enemy can be taken out of the fight with shots to the arms or legs.
- Weapons can be shot out of hands. Disarming is its own mechanic.
- There is a stamina meter now. It drains in melee and drains faster with a heavy weapon like a large wrench. Visible in the clips, per PC Gamer's analysis.
- The reticle now stays on screen whenever a gun is equipped, and you can fire without aiming first. Also from the clips.
- Drivers fight back. Pulling someone out of a car is a struggle, and it eats stamina too. Confirmed.
Now the interesting part. How you behave shapes how the world and its NPCs react, both in free roam and in how the main story develops. Pointless violence and chaos count against you, and good behaviour, down to putting litter in the right bin, counts for you. The community calls this a "criminal profile".
Part of this you can already see for yourself: in a leaked clip, when Jason keeps beating a man who is already down, a small devil icon with a minus appears on the right of the screen. It shows up specifically for pointless violence against someone who cannot fight back any more. PC Gamer carefully calls it a possible morality system in the spirit of Red Dead Redemption 2, and the caution is fair: one icon does not prove a whole system.
The NPC system is said to be considerably wider than GTA 5 and built on what RDR2 established. Characters can notice you eavesdropping on their conversation and push back if they decide you have crossed a line.
The police: now they remember you
This is the most worked-out part of everything known so far, and the best confirmed.
- A wanted level does not simply appear. An NPC has to see the crime first, or an alarm has to go off.
- Six stars are back. One more than GTA 5. Visible in the clips, confirmed by PC Gamer.
- The police remember your description. Three icons sit under the wanted level: a hanger for your clothes, a blank face for your appearance, a car for your vehicle. Confirmed by the clip analysis.
- A new haircut clears the appearance icon, but they still remember the clothes. To shed the description completely you have to change everything.
- A mask can stop them getting a description at all, even if the crime was caught on camera.
- Three stars are hard to shake in the city if you do not have a fast car.
- The police can wait you out. A patrol can park outside a bank or a shop and sit there until you come out. Which is why many places have a back way out.
- You can hand the heat to your partner. During a getaway you can split up and ask them to draw the pursuit onto themselves.
On top of that, traffic cameras and trackers on stolen cars turn up in the clips. Which makes the car itself a piece of evidence rather than just transport.
Money, cars and whatever the city is busy with
Money matters far more than in previous entries: sometimes you need a specific amount in hand before the story moves on. You earn it by stealing and selling cars, hitting shops and businesses, and robbing banks.
- Stealing cars got harder. Vehicles have tiers, and the more expensive the car the tougher it is to take.
- There is a quiet option now. At a car you can pick "smash window" or "clone key", and the second is quieter. Seen in the clips.
- The WAINK app scans a car and tells you its value, the registration cost and whether it has a lock, an alarm or a tracker.
- Jason and Lucia can own several cars, each with a working boot. That is where you keep spare clothes and weapons for shootouts and getaways.
- Fast travel runs through the Ryde Me taxi app. In the cab you can talk to other passengers, with full conversations. The rydeme.app domain really is registered to Take-Two, as GamesRadar and TechRadar reported.
There is a long list of smaller activities promised: kayaking, mini golf, pool, a zoo, diving, skydiving, the gym. Training builds muscle and strength, food restores a serious amount of health, and overeating puts weight on. You can go and look at wildlife the way you did in RDR2.
The phone runs apps like Snapmatic, where you can follow other accounts and subscribe to them. NPCs are said to vary a great deal in looks and build, with animations adapting to a character's size on the fly. Nearly every environment is meant to be full of small interactive details.
Random events are supposed to be constant. One example doing the rounds is too good to leave out: you can hand pills to a suspicious lawyer sitting in a dumpster, after which he starts texting you legal advice.
The map is described as "very large" and no exact size is given.
Jason and Lucia, and what tomorrow brings
The oddest part of the lot. Jason and Lucia live together but keep their own schedules: waking up, making coffee, showering, getting dressed, working out.
- They text each other. Spend most of a day apart and messages arrive, and ignoring them affects the relationship.
- Romance is optional. Time spent together outside the story develops it, but it grants no gameplay bonus. It is the player's call.
- How close they are affects missions, even if there is no romance between them.
- You can explore Leonida together, go shopping and to the hairdresser, work out, pull off robberies. You can hold hands and open doors for each other.
- They invite each other spontaneously to something going on nearby, or to a job.
On the story: there are said to be a lot of choices, large and small, and the small ones accumulate into serious consequences. It is built for replaying. Lucia's ankle monitor plays a noticeable part, and that one is not preview news at all: the monitor is visible in the official trailer.
Missions have several escape routes: you can pick who drives, who shoots, and which way you go. Movement, running, jumping and climbing have been reworked and should feel considerably smoother. Rockstar, by the look of it, is blurring the line between open-world activities and main missions and pushing you not to sprint from mission marker to mission marker.
Tomorrow all of this either holds up or it does not. The Netflix show first, the previews after. We will go through what survived and write it up separately.
Sources and the status of this information
The date of the Netflix extended look and the order in which preview embargoes lift: Vice, Push Square, GamingBible. Mechanics confirmed by analysis of the leaked clips (six stars, the three description icons, the stamina meter, the morality icon, the persistent reticle, drivers resisting, key cloning, traffic cameras and trackers): PC Gamer. The Ryde Me and What-Up domains registered to Take-Two: GamesRadar, TechRadar. Lucia's ankle monitor is visible in Rockstar's official trailer. The remaining points come from preview material circulating in the community ahead of the show and have no official confirmation as of publication. We do not link to leaked material.
