GTA 6 developers at Rockstar had the freedom to add cool features like RDR2’s Horse Balls
Rockstar Games gave GTA6The developers have so much freedom to add cool details that even the studio’s top executives aren’t privy to everything in the game.
The latest behind-the-scenes information on GTA 6 comes from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, who expanded on his trip to the Rockstar North offices in Edinburgh, Scotland, after previously share other highlights from the past week. One of the most notable elements shared in duration of his video of 18 minutes is that the team that spent a decade creating next month’s Grand Theft Auto game had some freedom to add details just because they thought they might be cool.
Schreier said he would assume that “even the best developers” at Rockstar don’t know every little detail added to Vice City and its wealth of NPCs. He noted that giving large teams the autonomy to flesh out every corner is not uncommon for open-world games. In the case of GTA 6 and its huge budget and a long development time, meaning players will likely still discover new details even years later.
Schreier shared a quote from Rockstar’s Aaron Garbut, who said: “Nobody has all this in their head.” This probably isn’t too new for the GTA team, with the video also serving as a reminder a specific detail from Red Dead Redemption 2.
Players may remember that the horses found through the cowboy simulator had testicles with realistic physics. What fans still love today is the fact that they shrink even in cold weather.
Garbut mentioned that this specific feature (if you can call it that) wasn’t something Rockstar had on a big list of details to include in Red Dead Redemption 2, nor was it something the team was ever asked to spend more time on. Instead, the shrinking of the horse’s testicles, like many other details of the 2018 Western sandbox game, was something that someone had ample time to work on and bring to life. It’s this same strategy that fans can expect to see implemented in GTA 6.
Schreier’s video also revealed that Rockstar I spent quite a bit of time trying to remove the weapon wheel which he had relied on in previous games. Fearing that hitting a game wheel on Jason and Lucia will remind players of what they can’t continue their person, they attempted to create a new system to replace it. The team then spent “months, even years, trying a million different things.” Examples listed include updates to decks, websites, and UI for Formula Before Finally, as we sawthrowing all those ideas out the window and going back to the traditional wheel of weapons.
Meanwhile, as one might imagine during the development of a major video game, Rockstar’s long road to launch has not been without its obstacles. Schreier said that “dark times” Development saw the GTA 6 team struggle between the years 2019 and 2022. He said that Rockstar’s desire to balance the realism of Red Dead Redemption’s gameplay with the traditionally more arcade-like systems that GTA is known for was the driving factor.
It was around this time that some members of the team felt like they were “treading water,” leading the project to shed some designers before the vision really began to come to fruition around early 2023. According to Schreier’s reports, some Rockstar artists have been working on GTA 6 since 2015, just two years after GTA 5 launched. It was that same year that the team began traveling to Miami to plot their Vice City reinvented.
Now, after all this time, GTA 6 is exactly one month away (!) from its release date of November 19, 2026. To help exhilarate everyone who waited 13 years to see if it was worth the long wait, Rockstar has taken over Miami. A recent example of its marketing campaign includes a collection of cars taken straight from the game.
To find out more, you can consult the new details And screenshots of the GTA 6 Launch Trailer. Rockstar insisted it won’t take another eight years to make your next gamebut while waiting for this one during these last 30 days, you can read IGN interview with Rob Nelson.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer at IGN. He is best known for his work on sites like The Pitch, The Escapist and OnlySP. Be sure to follow him on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
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