You can chill out for now, as Take-Two's latest earnings call has brought a statement that GTA 6 - this little game you might have heard of - is currently on track to make its previously announced release window of fall 2025.
GTA 6 is on the way and naturally I'm enthusiastic about the return of both Vice City and Rockstar's open-world crime saga, but one of the best Grand Theft Auto games - arguably the best - is, and always will be, GTA 4. Compared to San Andreas (and GTA 5), Grand Theft Auto 4 is somber, moody, mature, and atmospheric. Niko Bellic's bleak revenge tragedy combined with the reimagined Liberty City, still one of the best settings in videogame history, make GTA 4 better than almost all of its genre contemporaries. Released 16 years ago, it appears now that the spirit of Grand Theft Auto 4 lives on. Liquid Swords, the studio founded by Just Cause creator and former Avalanche developer Christofer Sundberg, just teased its first project, an open-world game with a recognizable aesthetic.
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The hype train for GTA 6 is already well and truly chugging along at this point. However, if you're hoping it'll offer an experience that's "wildly different" to GTA 5 in terms of being a huge step forward from a technical standpoint, a long-time Rockstar developer reckons you might want to keep your expectations in check a bit.
In an interview with YouTube channel SanInPlay, Obbe Vermeij, who served as a techincal director at Rockstar from 1995 to 2009, touched on the topic of expectations for this next entry in the series. He offered some interesting perspective as to why he thinks Rockstar may well have faced a big challenge - at least in comparison to previous titles in the series - when it comes to the idea of making a huge leap forwards with GTA 6.
"I don't think it's going to be wildly different to GTA 5," said Vermeij, who worked on GTAs 3 through 4 before leaving the studio in 2009, "I think people might be a little disappointed on the first day, but it's still gonna be the best game out there."
My hopes for Grand Theft Auto 6, I worry, are quite different from Rockstar's own ambitions. I don't like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I think it's directionless, too open, and too silly. Similarly, I don't enjoy anything about (the single-player) of Grand Theft Auto 5. GTA 3, Vice City, and more broadly Red Dead Redemption 2 are more my preference. I prefer when Rockstar is contained and somber, and willing to sacrifice player freedom in exchange for a more coherent plot. Perhaps it was before its time. Perhaps it was too different. Nevertheless, the best GTA game is now just $6.
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Why does the moon in GTA 3 change size whenever you shoot it with a sniper rifle? It’s a question that’s been haunting all of us for a long time now. Well, Thanks to one of the developers who worked on the game, we now know the answer.
GTA games are known for being home to the odd semi-hidden quirk or easter egg can that make for a great way to impress your little cousin if it’s their first time watching you play. Getting inside the Statue of Liberty in GTA 4 and casually basking in the cartoonish red glow of its beating heart is probably my personal favourite, but I’d imagine it didn’t come about via an unresolved dev argument.
You know what did? The fact that you can cause GTA 3’s moon to change size by sticking a bullet in it. Yup, ex-Rockstar Technical Director Obbe Vermeij - who you might remembeR having previously shared some details about a brief effort to make a Scottish zombie survival game using Vice City’s code - was there, and the whole moon thing was his way of trying to stop his coworkers from arguing with each other.