Anyone who played a Grand Theft Auto game before will tell you that a lot of the fun comes from everything you can do outside of scripted story sequences. GTA 6 looks to offer a wide range of things to do in Leonida that don’t include shooting people or driving recklessly.
We’ve been taking notes as we watched the Netflix extended look, and we’ve combed through IGN’s preview of the game for anything that caught our eyes. It turns out, there’s a wealth of side activities you can do in GTA 6. Here’s what we picked up on so far:
- You can pet (or scold) dogs.
- You can feed stray animals.
- You can study animals for what looks to be a Red Dead Redemption 2-like collecting mechanic.
- You can take part in backyard wrestling.
- You can take part in street races.
- You can drive electric scooters around.
- You can airboat across swamps.
- You can scuba dive in the ocean.
- You can kayak.
- You can play mini golf .
- You can play pool.
- You can lift weights and build muscle.
- You can work out with your partner.
- You can doomscroll social media.
- You can get in trouble by spending too long eavesdropping on random NPCs.
A few – if not all, we’re guessing – of these activities can be done as a couple, too. This also extends to more mundane things like going clothes shopping with your partner, or simply lounging around your safehouse drinking beers.
We’ve gleaned quite a bit more from today’s flood of information, such as how romance is going to work among the two protagonists and whether or not their relationship will have an effect of gameplay. Rockstar also shared a lot more about Criminal Profiles, a spiritual successor to Red Dead Redemption 2‘s Honor system, a complex system that takes so many factors into account, including context.
What’s likely to cause the most controversy amongst players, of course, is how hard Rockstar appears to be leaning into making a realistic world with involved mechanics and heavy consequences.
Over the past several months, Rockstar Games has been embroiled in a union-busting scandal after the studio fired around 40 people. The UK’s Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) threatened legal action against the studio, harshly criticising the dismissals on multiple occasions.
Many of Rockstar’s workers have since formed the Rockstar Game Workers Union (RGWU), which has grown its membership so much in recent months that it could soon trigger statutory recognition, forcing Rockstar to recognise the union.
GTA 6 releases 19th November on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
