The conversation continues about last week’s Grand Theft Auto 6 Extended Look, a highly praised showcase that also attracted some detractors. It’s social media, so negative takes are amplified, but one is being shot down by a GTA 5 voice actor.
Ned Luke, who played Michael De Santa in GTA 5, had a conversation with Partychat and House of Highlights, and addressed claims that GTA 5 looks better in some ways, or that GTA 6 just looks like GTA 5 with mods.
“This looks nothing like Grand Theft Auto 5. I think they’re out of their minds. I’ll tell you one thing: I never looked that good,” he said, pointing at Jason.
“The technology has grown by leaps and bounds, so what would make you think it’s not going to be better than those games?” he said. “It’s no diss to those games. It’s like between [GTA 5] and GTA 4. Our graphics blew GTA 4 away. They weren’t even close.”
Luke goes on to say that GTA 6 also looks better than Red Dead Redemption 2, and how the way the GTA characters move is how an “actual human walks.” He says his character in the game was a bit “mechanical” when it came to walking and standing.
The post-GTA 6 Extended Look discourse was mainly awe about how it looked, but over the coming days, the footage started being pulled apart, whether that was a singular awkward backflip animation, a hand not quite touching a car door to close it or, not related to graphics per se, the claim that Lucia cannot cock a shotgun with a single hand (as it turns out, it depends on the shotgun).
These are, of course, incredibly small nitpicks, but given that Rockstar puts incredibly small details in its games, it sort of opens itself up for things like this. The claim, however, that GTA 5 somehow looks better than GTA 6 is quickly dismissed by anyone with eyes, as for all the complaints you can make, it is genuinely hard to believe anyone could make that comparison in good faith. But the claim spread far enough that it was even on Ned Luke’s radar.
We don’t know what Rockstar’s marketing plan is from here. It would be hard to top the sheer amount of footage we saw in that showcase, so we may be back to more standard marketing or perhaps to hands-on press/influencer previews. But it’s clear at this point that Rockstar could do absolutely nothing and GTA 6 will be the biggest launch in gaming history. Pre-orders, however, were estimated to shoot up by over 400% in the wake of the Extended Look. Given the hundreds and hundreds of potential play hours in the game, I don’t think anyone would say no to another 20 minutes of footage.
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