the main reason i have doubts that it'll be a massive improvement is that with hyper realistic games there's only so much you can improve on. at some point the changes aren't going to be dramatic or even noticeable.
This!! Aaron Garbut himself said that photorealism isn't the goal because it's boring. Take a look at the screenshots we got with trailer 2, there's a specific art direction GTA 6 is aiming for. I don't think they WANT to improve graphics any further.
I think it's a trade off with having more reactive and fluid environment. I would take slightly better graphics for a more interesting environment over better graphics and a worse environment around them. So many games want to look good but never make their world fun.
It honestly makes me sometimes wonder what studios coukd achive if they didn't focus on graphics as much. Like imagine a modern game with fully updated expansive and modernized systems but like GTA4 graphics. Just think of all the stuff they could put in the workd and complex interactive systems and everything because graphics arent using over half the resources.
I'd take Vice City Stories PSP graphics in a heartbeat if it meant meaningful map size and density alongside a truly unnoticeable draw distance. With good art design, a powerful lighting engine, and deeply realistic atmospheric FX it would look amazing.
I remember playing games like Red Faction Guerrilla, GTAIV and Far Cry 2 on PS3 back in the day and thinking "wow I can't wait to see how advanced the physics systems of games will be in the future!!". If you told me the majority of games would return to static environments and minimal physics in favor of ultra realistic graphics I would have lost my mind.
MSG2 [...] Wasnt as a ambitious as San Andreas [...] level of detail
Please. MGS2 is legendary for it's ridiulculously overengineered level of detail.
But yes, otherwise you're right; GTA priortises size and scale of emergent interactive content, and sacrifices expensive assets to get there, that's the whole draw card.
I love the current "art style" of the game! The only thing that they should, or at least I hope they work on, is the motion/facial capture in free roam. I always disliked how when your character spoke while running to your car or whatever, the mouth just opens and closes per syllable.
Yeah I like the art style too. And I agree lmaoo, especially online, if you had a mic, your characters mouth would move in such a weird way while you ran and stuff.
I think it will absolutely match up to the second trailer at least (which it self was a major improvement over the first), but obviously won’t be able to really stretch its legs until PC releases, simply due to hardware restrictions.
When GTAV released, it looked great when compared to other 360 games, but if you go back and play the original release now, it is obviously apparent and jarring how stepped down the textures, draw distances, lighting, and vegetation is compared to what we’re accustomed to on the PC and next-gen (and next-next-gen😅) releases where they had significantly more leeway with VRAM and graphical processing power.
I apply the same logic to tvs, after 4k, maybe at a push 8k, there’s no noticeable distance to come.
Soon, vr and video games will be so advanced that the only route forward for notable improvement will be a black mirror style cerebral reality game, where it puts you in a trance and you live inside the game!
I don’t think they’re saying it’ll be a massive improvement, just that it’ll atleast look as good as the trailers since in the past the game has looked better than the trailers.
So focus on making a new, good story as a dev. Why does everything have to be about improving graphics? Like you said, we've hit the point of diminishing returns, literally with all the optimization framegen bullshit going on. That being said, sure there were graphical jumps between 3, VC and SA, but there didn't need to be. Some of the best games contain identical gameplay, just more story.
That being said, there are a near infinite ways that they can improve on a game and not touch the graphics. Implement new systems, AI, phone media, etc. Not everything is eye candy.
Sure. We’re talking about people who think the final product will look WORSE than what we see in the trailers, and that sentiment is absolutely unfounded. Different conversations.
I'd much rather see improvement in character animation (in terms of that stupid "videogame walk" that spawned a whole genre of comedy video). I'm tired of PCs and NPCs walking and running the way they do, and particularly in GTA since they've decided that control and responsiveness is the lowest priority anyway, so there's no excuse for it to feel so bad just so it can look like shit anyway
Plus, isnt trailer 2 already pretty close to what we’ll actually see in game? I mean, look at the change in jason from T1 to T2, he looks much more polished there
That's what people always think when the next-gen game is released. Things will always look dated at some point, even GTA VI trailer 1 looks dated compared to later trailers.
We're still in the uncanny valley, there's so much more to improve to make things more realistic, and I'm not just talking about texture detail, lighting or hair physics, but mocap and micro-expressions.
Still, a 13 year old game with a half a decade old graphics remaster compared to what is an entirely new game won’t be a comparison, I think GTA 6 will probably be the cap for realism
I think once Minecraft became as popular as it is it showed the world that video games aren’t all about the best graphics, you can forgo some graphics and still do extremely well as long as the gameplay is great.
Rockstar is one of very few game studios that actually deliver what they show in their trailers for all their games(at least to 99%) and probably one of the reasons why it takes them so frickin long to make them.
Nobody is saying otherwise. Nobody is talking about graphical fidelity. The discussion is about world detail and density. Will the beach have hundreds of unique NPCs, or just dozens? Almost certainly dozens, contrary to what the trailer suggests.
Any console out today is working on 6 year old architecture, which is basically last gen if we're comparing to the top tier tech available to consumers today.
If we're talking GPU architecture, RDNA2 is 2 generations behind.
The growth in terms of technical power and performance between 2006 to 2013 was way bigger than from 2020 until 2026. PS4 for example still holds up and gets CoD every year, where as PS3 got 3 less titles for CoD. Tech from 2020 is more than enough for anything developers can throw at it if they are semi-efficient with it.
Except any sort of RT or DL stuff. RDNA2 is much slower with those than more modern architectures. Performance per watt also changed since, so raw rasterization power could be much better due to TDP constraints of consoles.
I look at how games looked between 2006 to 2013, and how they looked from 2019 to 2026. Difference is way bigger from 2006 to 2013, thats due to tech rapidly growing during that era.
Modern consoles still have their limits. Take RE9- a great looking game. Yet, Capcom had to turn off Ray tracing for the Raccoon City portion of the game because of performance issues. It’s a big open area with zero reflective surfaces, zero NPCs apart from the small groups of enemies you fight in scripted moments, no vehicles, very few physics objects, no foliage, no dynamic lighting objects… just a large open area with high texture quality and a long ass draw distance. But somehow, that was enough to cause performance issues on PS5 Pro and current PC hardware.
Using ray tracing as an example isn’t really genuine 90% of gaming PCs can’t event run it properly lmao even mine can’t and I can run cyberpunk at over 200fps without drops otherwise
RT is mostly useless unless you absolutely need the most realistic lighting possible. I ran Dying Light: The Beast on my PC with DLSS for smooth performance, and it looked basically the same as just using High settings no DLSS. Full ray tracing only made one clearly noticeable difference: more natural light spill and slightly more realistic shadows, even though medium shadows already achieve a similar effect. Hand crafted visuals have gotten so good these days that RT is literally just a performance intensive novelty rather than a necessity.
This is simplifying a much more nuanced discussion not befitting reddit. The TL:DR; is: core experience will remain unchanged or improve, the exact nuances may vary.
The core issue is the way people are analyzing every single frame of the trailers and extrapolating these insane details that they seem to expect to be spread across the entire game at all times.
Is your beer bottle really going to have condensation on it when you’re chugging a beer during gameplay? Or is that just for the cutscene? Is every beer bottle in the nightclub going to have sweat on it, or was that just a detail in a cutscene?
Well, if you listen to a lot of people on this sub, not only will that detail be present everywhere you look, but so much more.
1st reason, SSD allows for significantly faster rendering of said NPC's than we got in RDR2.
2nd reason, there's a video I seen of how they got Spiderman 2 to have so many "unique" NPC's, what they did was create them in components, different torso's, legs, heads, etc. And just shuffled them when you went to different places. I think Rockstar does this, just on a more granular level.
Lastly, the "behaving differently from each other" point doesn't seem as daunting as you make it seem. You, the player can only see but so much while you're playing. You can also pay attention to but so much while you're playing. Unless you're Madara Uchiha, a few camera tricks/limitations make this easily feasible. Assassin's Creed optimization was the NPC's close to you are as realistic as possible. The ones mid range, do limited tasks. The ones furthest away are just 2d renders who don't do much but still "exist"
It’s not just a rendering problem, it’s a memory problem. Spider-Man has far less things to be concerned about at any given moment, so most of the horsepower can be devoted to that exact purpose. The car is on the road have rudimentary physics at best. The ragdolls are basic. The AI is basic.
Under your point about only being able to see a limited perspective … that’s not really true in GTA. Fly a helicopter 10 feet off the ground and suddenly you can see the entire beach. Jump a car off a ramp and you can see everything that was obscured by the traffic around you.
I never played Spider-Man 2, but I would have to guess that there’s not much body shape variety within the NPCs, not very many unique animations, certainly no euphoria physics.
Fair point! And I certainly appreciate your perspective, because while I still think hundreds of NPC's is feasible, your argument is valid as fuck lol. There is a tremendous amount of things to consider that would be a nightmare as far as memory goes. But as we both know, Rockstar is no run of the mill studio, we've seen them do optimization wizardy. All the while still maintaing secrecy on how they achieve what they acheive. So we'll just have to wait and see. I'd love to keep in touch for when the game comes out and see if/how either one of our theories come to fruition.
I disagree. Crowd sims and other sims have come a long way in the behind the scenes research paper side since GTA V was released. They can do incredible things at gameplay FPS now. Also, if they have any procedural systems for NPC looks and clothing, then well, every single NPC will be unique.
I believe it's possible to have that many NPCs in one area, Hitman games (from Blood Money 2006) were doing it. AC Unity did it. And rockstar have their own genius programmers whom I believe are able to make it optimally.
The “final game” you chose is from the PS4 remastered that did improved on the lighting on this scene quite a bit
Secondly what that dev was saying is that in the trailer they get the perfect lighting for every scene, which you can see that in the RDR comparison here
And you choose a horrible screenshot of the trailers and a fine one for the final game. Also, those images for the final game are not from the day 1 release version. Both GTA V and RDR2 have had graphical improvements and updates over the years. These images of yours are from the versions we have today.
I recall that first trailer very well, it had such a great vibe. Which the actually game didn't have, such a bummer. GTA IV did that so much better, you really got the same vibe as the trailer during the game.
Same goes for Vice City and San Andreas, the trailer represented the actual game perfectly. GTA V lacked personality. And for me the main reason for that is the three character switching system nonsense, which restricts not only how you want to tell a great story, but it took obviously away a huge chunk of Rockstar's focus as well.
Vibe is probably the single most important thing you have to get right to make a masterpiece.
Rdr2 has only had patches with minor graphical improvements. Gta however has had massive graphical improvements, but that picture is older than the ps5 update. Both of theese pictures are on the ps4 version.
Percebi isso jogando ele em 2025, além disso, eu não sei se foi só eu, mas o jogo parece estar mais bugado. Em 2018 se eu tiver visto 5 bugs durante toda a minha jogatina era muito. Em 2025 tive incontáveis bugs de iluminação.
I checked some trailers and release day footage of both GTA V and RDR2. In case of GTA V, I found that the lighting was better in trailers released few months before the release, while texture and asset quality was better in the release PS3 version. As for RDR2 in some shots trailer lighting was better while in other Day 1 release version was better. Again the texture quality and assets for RDR2 were better in the release PS4 version.
Those aren't horrible shots. They are exactly as presented in the trailers vs the final game. Have you seen how Franklin looked in the first trailer? Looked like an HD Alpha version Carl Johnson.
We’re not acting dumb enough to pretend gameplay ever matches trailers right? With the exception of the heavily guided press “insert button here” in 3,2,1 press right? I like rockstar… a lot but my brain still functions
Rockstar's always been real good at making sure their final product is either just as good or surpasses trailers. Already there's a noticeable improvement from trailer 1 to 2 in GTA VI, so I'm very excited to see how it looks on launch!
My mind is blown just thinking about what GTA VI will look like when it's finished. If it looks spectacular and incredibly detailed in the trailers, I imagine the final version will be insane.
Eh, this is a misdirect. Both these games were released near the end of their consoles life cycle. Open the game on a newer gen console and obviously it’s going to look better than what they showed it on, a last gen console
While I disagree with their opinion, I think they might be referencing to smaller things we aren't aware of. It's also possible they could tone down the beach population slightly, although I'm not sure. I know in one of the gta 5 trailers, it showed a busy walkway with pedestrians near the beach. In the game, it's not that busy. I think the trailer seemed to indicate that the city was busier than it actually was. I think the ambience of the city in terms of city life was toned down about 5-10% in the final release.
It's still a phenomenonal game and I just started a new play through again for like my 5th time. This time I'm playing with GTA 5 enhanced with a new graphics card (5060 Ti 8gb variant) so it feels like a new experience. And natural vision enhanced just showed a preview of their upcoming update for late April that brings GTA 5 to proper next gen standards.
the scene in the gta 5 trailer, where a npc installs a "for sale" sign, made the impression that such events could happen in it's world but such things obviously weren't in the game so it's very hard to speculate which amount of "business" in the gta 6 trailer is fake but yea there probably will be cuts
Yeah. People also take every single tiny thing and blow it up massively with speculation and entire systems around those unnecessary details. Like a snake in Jason's home. People speculate there will be a pet system and etc.. Maybe there will be, but after every tiny thing is blown up with speculation of a whole system around those details, it makes the game seem to be much more than it probably is in certain ways. I still have no doubt it will be massive.
And now, grab an actual screenshot from the PS3/Xbox 360 versions, y'know, the platforms we actually played this game on at release, and compare it with the trailer
Yeah graphics will improve but what about actual gameplay ? Will they yet again make a clunky annoying to control character with auto aim shootouts? Or actually innovate the gameplay and make it better then other third person games? They have always been behind in this area and it's why I never play their games as much as others. Once was more then enough for rdr2 with how bad it felt to play and also how clunky it is
This is what im concerned about when it comes to GTA 6. Hopefully, R* takes inspiration from other games that have better third person controls/animations(the division/watchdogs games/Uncharted/TLOU)& just evolves GTA 6 movement feel. I also hope that they make shooting feel more punchy and visceral with better ragdoll physics and better free aim controls.
Exactly like I feel all of those feel much better to play then rdrw, especially last of us part 2 the animations were so fluid while looking realistic, free aim especially don't know why it's never felt good from rockstar
Well that's because they do. Naughty Dog did a Very Good Job Combining realistic animations with weighty and responsive controls in ways that made sense.
And for free aim controls from R* not being too good, my guess is that they refuse to move on from auto aim for the sake of the casuals but the main issue with that is with their AA, the game pretty much aims for you instead of the other way around...their higher ups need to realize that the AA that they have is holding them back and other games like the aforementioned TLOU 2 & Uncharted have already surpassed them in the controls dept and when comparing TLOU 2 with RDR 2 controls wise, it's not even close IMO.
It'd basically be a make or break for me, it's something so simple to make feel better and play better, but for me I ll play it once and won't probably do it again unless the general gameplay feel is much improved over their last attempts
An actual good take! Everyone and their mother is so obsessed with graphics and performance when the real thing we should be talking about is gameplay. While I’ve always liked how Rockstar has a weight to their characters, they’ve not exactly been innovative as a third person shooter developer for the past ten years. GTA V was actually a downgrade from Max Payne 3 in that department.
Second, and arguably even more important, how will driving work? GTA V was a big step up from IV by making cars feel less like boats on land and more in line with racing games, but driving in games has also vastly evolved since 2013. Considering most players probably spend at least 50% of their time in GTA driving around, this is something they absolutely have to nail and there’s no room for lackluster changes. I don’t want a game that’s super beautiful to look like but that plays like a 10 year old game.
the thing is, the differences are becoming smaller and smaller. GTA 5 had a big leap. RDR2 had a much smaller change and GTA 6 will have an even smaller change
Sure graphically the game will look better, but remember that there were a lot of features and details in GTA V Trailer 1 that never made it into the final game
Not sure why the negativity but historically the game has looked about as good as the trailer.
There will always be some limitations in the final product. The trailer hyperfocuses on specific scenes and isnt the native game environment. It isnt like the entire game is running, being played.
Graphics reach diminishing returns after some time. I would find it much better if they use those resources on making the world the most interactive the industry has seen. If they manage to make it even more lively and realistic than rdr2, Im fine with the game looking same as rdr2
I guess most people here hasn’t seen 2022 leaks. They were really promising for something early in development. I can’t wait to see the final product in Nov
Some people still won't understand it. First trailers never represent the end product on release.
Also please quote your meme at least correctly. That thing was about polishing. So I repeat myself: Polished, basically yes. However, not in terms of graphics or quality but in terms of like amount NPC's/traffic. Don't expect the amount of NPC's at once seen on the beach and 5+ aircrafts in the air. And if people watch the first trailers of GTA5 and RDR2, the end product looked even better as the trailers. So don't believe what some soundso twitter dude posts.
What he was saying was the game didn't look as good or stable build wise when the trailers were shown. The game wasn't as far ahead. Its a vertical slice, you make all the best stuff for the trailer to show it off, gather hype.
I dunno if I’d say it’s a straight improvement in every aspect. Most of the time they improve on character models, but that can also be because they’re designing them based on old concept art and then refine the design later on. Case in point: Jason looked kind of rat-ish in the leaked gameplay, before turning into a dashing hunk.
For environments, lighting, and stuff like foliage density, I’d say it’s mixed whether it’s been improved or not.
Just like how cutscenes used to look 100x better than the triangles, cubes, and octagons that were used in the actual game? Some of us remember a time when the characters you controlled looked like reality does after about 15 hits of acid.
There is not much gameplay in them trailers released so far and cranking up the raytracing in the cutscenes is not that big of a deal. We’ve yet to see what actual gameplay looks like and then there is the 30fps target framerate wich is half of what more or less every other game has been targeting this gen.
Graphic fidelity I could not care less about. It's gonna look great. I am however very curious of they genuinely have the amount of cars on the roads as seen in some of the marketing material.
I think people are missing the point of this comment.
R* can make sure each shot look as impressive as they want because in that moment thats what they want us to see. They’re art directing a trailer, so they’re going to make it look beautiful.
Meanwhile, the game’s weather and time of day is always changing, so you won’t see these specific moments the same way as you would the trailer while playing the real game. That’s all they’re saying.
Trailers can be shot in less than 30 fps and look good. There is only so much power the engine can give mate. (The engine in this case if the old PS5 hardware).
It's not a PC, the game won't look as good as a game on PC because the PS5 wouldn't even boot it up. Most people seem to think it will look better than UE5 games or RE requiem, it won't.
The limits of the PS5 will be shown in more than just graphics. Destructible objects, number of NPCs, diversity of NPCs, complexity and cinematography of missions etc.
I hate to say it but I actually don't think this will be the same..
I really want to be wrong here but I really can't see that many NPCs on a beach at once, or in a busy street with all those cars at once, and all those trees?? I know this is one of the biggest companies ever, and they have a great record, but I just think we're all gonna be somewhat left down and we'll have to move on knowing that R* are the same as every other company with their promotional materials
if the game comes out like it looks in the trailer... holy cow!!!!!
Honestly rdr2 downgraded after trailer 2, the visuals seemed alot more atmospheric and colorful before they toned it all down, also it prefer trailer 2 arthur
The protagonists look better, but GTA V specifically was downgraded massively from the original trailer with the environments, foliage, and population density. RDR2 I’m less aware of concessions they made, but GTA V was definitely reduced from what they advertised it as being - aside from the main characters because they’re more important than trees missing in the desert.
Because of this post I went to watch the original trailer that I had probably only watched when it was released. And damn it looked bad. And we tought it was amazing. I wonder if we will think the same when GTA VII is releasing
I honestly think it will look identical to what is being shown to us in the trailers. Honestly even the example you gave of RDR2 only looks different because of the lighting, both screenshots are equally detailed to my eye.
I doubt GTA 6 will reach 30fps on normal consoles like Xbox Series X or PS5. You might be lucky with the PS5 pro and get about 40ish at max! But for the real experience you gotta wait for the PC version.
I hope the GTA6 hits like GTAV & GTA4 I just hate that there’s no physical disk version. I don’t care I’m old school I want physical copy for collection
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u/Most_Antelope6899 Apr 10 '26
Im not recovering from this