Long before we knew that GTA 6 would be played from the perspective of dual protagonists Jason and Lucia, many were wondering just how many playable characters Rockstar’s latest would include. And it turns out that the answer wasn’t always two.
Grand Theft Auto 5 charted a new direction for the series by increasing the number of characters to three, where there had always been just one. Red Dead Redemption 2 does have multiple protagonists, but can never be switched between in the style of GTA 5 due to story reasons. It begged the question of which direction the developer would go when first designing 6.
IGN recently visited Rockstar North to speak with co-studio head Rob Nelson, who revealed discussions were had at one point in time regarding the number of characters increasing to four. But, ultimately, the team landed on one couple, with the bonds built between player and character at the foremost point of those discussions.
“As the narrative unfolds, we’re quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character,” says Nelson. “After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of – do we do more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now? But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each and therefore player connection with those characters. So we decided to step in this direction of two characters in a relationship.”
But then the question became: how do you make players feel like, ‘I love them both?’ Chemistry is a notoriously hard thing to do in any sort of entertainment. Either the characters and the actors that embody them have it – or they don’t. Everyone involved worked at that pretty hard. I think we’ve got it. I think we’ve got enough reaction within our team internally to where they feel great as individuals and together.”
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
