GTA VI Has Around 600,000 NPC Animations: Rockstar Art-Directed Every Pedestrian

600,000 animations for the crowd

Rockstar art-directed every one of Grand Theft Auto VI's non-player characters (NPCs), creating around 600,000 animations in the process. ^[1] If you play GTA VI, the people you pass on the street are the ones this work covers. ^[1]

To get there, Rockstar set up a dedicated LA-based team of writers, directors and producers. ^[1] Their job was to make the pedestrians of Leonida feel individually realised. ^[1] Leonida is the game's fictional take on Florida. ^[1]

Procedural crowds versus personalities

Normally, procedural systems assemble background NPCs, which makes them largely interchangeable. ^[1] GTA VI's non-player characters will have their own personalities. ^[1]

NPCs have personality traits that shape how they react to the player. ^[1] These include temperament and aggression, where they are, what they have seen, and how the player has treated them. ^[1]

Place matters too, because different districts in Leonida have their own demographic and professional mix. ^[1]

How Rockstar thinks about behaviour

Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, describes a process of constantly asking how people might behave. ^[1] He asks how many people will be aggressive, how many will go for a weapon, and how many will test the player. ^[1]

One example comes from a character reaction to an unpleasant smell, which was originally made for one piece of content. ^[2] Rockstar turned it into a broader system allowing other locations to provoke varying degrees of disgust. ^[2]

When Jason entered a house with no bespoke scene written for it, he began to grimace and recoil. ^[2] The broader smell system produced that reaction. ^[2]

A bigger map with more interiors

Leonida's map is roughly twice the size of GTA V's map. ^[2] Rockstar says the total landmass of GTA VI, including Vice City and surrounding areas, is nearly as large as the playable maps of GTA IV, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined. ^[2]

GTA VI contains an order of magnitude more interiors than its predecessors, according to Aaron Garbut. ^[2] Garbut is a head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar. ^[2]

Garbut recalled wandering into a house where family photographs of a dog hung in one room and the next room was trashed. ^[2] The generously wide roads and highways of GTA V were narrowed to feel more believable. ^[2]

How the preview was played

Previously, GTA previews were staged so that one team member played the game while a publicist read from a pre-prepared script. ^[2] For this preview, Nelson played the current build for 90 minutes without a script, following his own instincts. ^[2]

The session began in an apartment shared by protagonist Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos. ^[2] They are partners in crime and, if the player wishes, in love. ^[2]

The studio behind it

Rockstar North has around 900 employees and is a studio in Edinburgh. ^[2] The lobby of its building has a mural with the slogan 'PARANOIA IS GOOD'. ^[2]

GTA VI development has been affected by extraordinary leaks, including at least one accompanied by threats of blackmail. ^[2]

A film with a similar premise

The 2021 film Free Guy starred Ryan Reynolds as a character living a repetitive, meaningless existence in a video game world. ^[1] A Free Guy sequel has been long mooted but never confirmed. ^[1]