GTA 6 has officially been delayed to 2026, so fans have time to buy other games and save money for a potential $100 open-world title. That’s not official yet, but it's possible since we've seen what Nintendo is doing with their future games.
As we wait for more information on this Rockstar Games project, we wonder what GTA 6 can do to make open-world games cool again. While this series made the genre popular, the number of them that have appeared since shows that they aren’t special anymore. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good, but a lot of them don’t really stand out.
Since the release of GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar Games has tried to balance the fun you can have exploring with overly serious storytelling. Based on the trailer of GTA 6, this game looks to bring that formula back, but with really pretty graphics. Only time will tell if this will be enough to win fans over, though that could work based on anticipation alone.
The fact that there isn’t any gameplay yet is disappointing, since we don’t have anything to analyze or determine. We do know that this is going to be another large open-world game, maybe the biggest one yet, but big worlds don’t exactly impress gamers anymore. Maybe the sheer amount of activities will win some over, though this can also lead to the game having Ubisoft-like problems.
Innovation isn’t needed to keep fans interested, as most people just want satisfying gameplay and a solid story to play through. Previous Rockstar Games have been able to do that pretty well, but this won’t win over gamers who haven’t been excited about these kinds of games for a while. Still, GTA 5 did sell more copies than many thought possible, so we won’t be too surprised if this game does this as well, $100 price tag and all.
We do wonder if games like Zelda: Breath of the Wild will influence GTA 6 in any way. Both games are pretty different from each other, except for using the open-world genre. Other games have tried taking bits of BOTW and doing their own thing, but we don’t know how that would work with Grand Theft Auto. Maybe there will be a joke at the game’s expense, but we don’t know what else they could do.
Rockstar Games will probably impress everyone by the sheer amount of content players can go through when GTA 6 comes out. If the gameplay and story hit, this will likely stay with gamers for a long time. However, the lack of innovation will make us wonder why they spent so much time and money on a prettier version of Vice City.