I wasn’t exactly surprised when I heard that Grand Theft Auto 6 would be coming to PS5 and Xbox Series X before it ever comes to PC; Rockstar took that same approach with GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. Even though I’ve had to wait for those games to come to PC, they’ve always been better when you have the hardware to really push these games to another level, and I didn’t expect GTA 6 to be any different.
Then I watched the Extended Look on Netflix, and it looks incredible. Even from from my couch, I could tell there were some incredible ray-traced global illumination, reflection, and shadow effects, which really make the game come alive. There were even moments — like when Jason and Lucia talk to someone behind a window — where the shadows dynamically move across the stranger’s face that really make the game look like a technical masterpiece.
The only problem is that it was running on a base PS5. The game looks incredible regardless, but there were certainly moments where the frame rate slowed down considerably. I had already heard word that GTA 6 will only get a 60fps mode on the PS5 Pro, and now I can definitely see why. With all those lighting effects and the high-resolution textures, Grand Theft Auto 6 is really going to make the base consoles chug.
I have a hard time believing that GTA 6 will even be able to run at a steady 60fps on even the PS5 Pro, even though I know just how talented Rockstar’s engineers are at making gorgeous games run on limited hardware. What I really want to do is take away those limits with an extemely powerful graphics card.
When Red Dead Redemption 2 finally made its way to PC, it was one my go-to games to test hardware with for years. I’ve only just recently dropped it from my testing rotation. The reason it stuck around so long was how scalable it was. Rockstar found a way to allow people to turn the settings down to a ridiculous degree, to be able to play it on PCs that frankly had no right trying to run it. Likewise, if you did have a beefy computer, there were dozens of things you could tweak that elevated the game far beyond how it looked on the PS4 and Xbox One. That game’s PC port was a huge leap over GTA 5’s port, too, and I suspect that when GTA 6 makes its way to PC (maybe sometime next year?), Rockstar is going to take those learnings even further.
There are already a couple things I’d like to see from the PC version. In a couple of moments in the extended trailer, reflections were quite noisy, particularly in the bodies of cars. It just so happens that Nvidia launched a new version of ray reconstruction just this week at Gamescom that would basically solve that issue.
At least until some new version of GTA Online comes out, this would be the perfect game to use frame generation, which will help smooth out some of the more noticeable frame drops — at least visually. I know that frame generation is controversial, but this is one of those games where I really want to see just how smooth I can make it, especially because the world looks so lived-in otherwise.
I’m sure there are plenty of folks out there that really just want to get their hands on the game immediately. And while I’ll probably end up playing it at least a little bit when the game launches on consoles in November, I just know that I’m going to want to wait until the game launches on PC to really dive in.
Who knows, there may even be more powerful graphics hardware available when the PC version launches that will make the game look even better than what’s possible right now. I don’t know what the PC version of the game is going to look like yet, of course, but I know that once it finally comes out I’m going to put it through its paces to see just how good I can get it looking — maybe even with mods.
If it looks as good on PS5 as it the Netflix Extended Look made it seem, the inevitable PC port is going to be absolutely jaw-dropping. I already wanted that PC port, but now I need it.
Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra
