It’s finally here! The sneak peek of an in-depth look at a crime sim currently without a PC release date! GTA 6, or in the immortal words of Jack Nance, “Grand Theft Auto” (6). After a long absence of concrete things, we’re now inundated with details, like how it’s up to you to decide whether protagonists Lucia and Jason stay together or not. But it turns out that some changes are coming to the series’ namesake: car theft.
You know how car theft works in the Greater Toronto Area. You waltz over and press a button. It doesn’t matter what car it is, where it is, who it belongs to, you can just hop in it and take it for a ride. But according to an interview with Rockstar co-founder Rob Nelson with The IGNyou can expect some cars to be a little more difficult to solve. “We added a few layers of lamination to the vehicles,” says Nelson.
“Previously, you could just press triangle to automatically connect and steal any vehicle you wanted and take off. We felt like that left a lot of gameplay potential on the table, in terms of progression and decision-making for players. I think it gives more meaning to all the vehicles, and you have to be a little more careful about what you do.” can use to understand all of this before trying to hack one.
“We also now have this scanner built into the phone,” Nelson says from an application called WAINK. Charming! By scanning a car with this app you can learn some information about the car. “For example, it tells me that this car is locked, that it has an alarm and doesn’t have a tracker. It also tells me how much it’s worth if I take it to a Pay n’ Spray or a specialty auto fence, and how much it would cost me to register it myself. So, for example, this car needs a key cloner. This other car will only need a Slim Jim. So we added a lot of fun little tools that you need or mechanisms that you need to perform these formerly binary actions.
With many cars now using electronic keys, you may need to get a digital key cloning device just to unlock some doors, which comes at a cost in the first place. Having access to all this technology isn’t a guarantee of victory either, as some cars can be equipped with secret trackers, with some versions even showing your location to the cops if you drive too slowly.
Don’t expect driving itself to be an easy experience either, as Nelson explains: “The streets in this game are narrower and more realistic in terms of scale. Which, on top of all the traffic density on the roads, makes driving slightly more difficult and requires a bit of skill.”
I’d also like to remind you that, following the firing of 34 Rockstar employees last year and the approach of a lawsuit involving the studio and said developers next month, these former employees are asking you to support their legal fund rather than boycott the game. And to be honest, if you can afford this $80 video game, I guess you can participate too!
