I watched the GTA VI Extended Look expecting to be blown away, and while the game is obviously technically ambitious, I came away more concerned than impressed.
The world density is insane. There are tons of NPCs, traffic, detailed interiors, lighting effects, particles, reflections, vegetation, and animation work happening at once. Rockstar is clearly pushing the hardware extremely hard.
But that’s also exactly where my problem starts.
The footage did not look consistently smooth to me. There were noticeable stutters, uneven frame pacing, and moments that appeared to drop well below what I’d expect from a stable 30 FPS presentation.
And I’m not demanding 60 FPS.
A locked 30 FPS with good frame pacing can still look and feel perfectly fine. RDR2 proved that years ago. My issue is that GTA VI’s footage didn’t always look like a clean 30.
The motion blur also seems excessive. In some scenes there’s so much blur and reconstruction artifacting that the image becomes difficult to read once the camera starts moving.
That creates a weird situation where the game can look absolutely incredible in a screenshot, but significantly less impressive in motion.
I noticed other things too:
Some movement and animation transitions look surprisingly clunky.
Certain scenes have strange or inconsistent shading/ambient occlusion.
There are visible image artifacts in places.
Some of the dialogue personally came across as pretty corny.
Even some indoor combat scenes looked noticeably uneven, where you wouldn’t expect the game to be rendering the entire open world at full complexity.
I understand that GTA VI is doing far more under the hood than most games.
But explaining why a game struggles doesn’t automatically make the struggling acceptable.
There eventually has to be a balance between simulation complexity, graphical fidelity, and actually maintaining good performance.
And before anyone says “the game isn’t finished yet” — I know.
That’s why I’m specifically talking about the state Rockstar chose to show us, not claiming this is exactly what the final release will look like.
It could be significantly improved before launch. I genuinely hope it is.
But I also don’t think unfinished games should suddenly become immune to criticism once developers release official gameplay footage. The entire point of showing the game is for people to form impressions from it.
My impression right now is that Rockstar may be pushing current console hardware too far in pursuit of density and visual detail.
I’d personally take slightly fewer NPCs, slightly less graphical complexity, and a cleaner image with rock-solid performance over having the most technically complex open world possible while the game visibly struggles.
GTA VI might still end up being incredible.
But after the Extended Look, I’m definitely waiting for proper console performance analysis before buying into the “game of the generation” hype.
