Rockstar says GTA 6 is so big not even the devs have seen everything

GTA 6 is still surprising the people making it, with Rockstar North’s co-studio head Rob Nelson saying he doubts anyone on the team knows everything in the game.

Rockstar has already said GTA 6’s story won’t take players to every part of its massive map. Exploring beyond those missions will be part of discovering what Leonida has to offer.

But the scale goes beyond how much ground players can cover. According to Nelson, there’s enough content coming together that even he keeps encountering things he hasn’t seen or heard before.

Speaking to IGN, Nelson described how a suggestion from Jason unexpectedly changed his plans during a play session.

“The game is so big, I don’t know that there’s anybody on the team that knows all of it. There’s so much stuff, so much dialogue that’s regularly hitting the build on an ongoing basis,” he said.

“So I was pleasantly surprised to hear Jason call out the impound lot and thought, ‘Oh, we can do it.’”

Rockstar/Game Informer

GTA 6 rewards players who go looking beyond story missions

Nelson explained that he had been heading to a shop to rob when Jason suggested another job as they drove past a car park. He hadn’t heard that dialogue before, and the interruption convinced him to change course.

That kind of discovery is central to how Rockstar wants players to experience its world and build off Red Dead Redemption 2.

“There is a whole other world in Red Dead Redemption 2, yes. GTA 6 is very much like that,” Nelson said.

“There’s a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we’re not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well.”

His advice was simple: “If you take a bit of time and explore, you will be rewarded – a lot. It’s a big map, a very big map.”

Rockstar Games

Previous coverage has already highlighted more than 170 animal species and activities including kayaking, scuba diving and mini golf, giving players plenty of reasons to take a detour.

Nelson also described how ordinary robberies can develop into escapes that feel like handcrafted story sequences. Your partner can drive while you shoot at pursuing police, with blown tires causing crashes that block the vehicles behind them.

A getaway can even involve your partner beating a train at the last second, cutting off the chase.

According to Nelson, those moments “can feel like you’re playing a scripted mission, which is totally new for us.”

With fresh dialogue still entering the build and unscripted encounters changing his own plans, even someone making GTA 6 can get distracted on the way to the next job.