Rockstar slowed GTA 6 down because GTA V's pace "felt too fast" in Vice City

GTA 6 is going to play slower than GTA V, and Rockstar did it on purpose. In Edge's issue 430 cover feature, out on 29 October, Rockstar North's co-studio head Rob Nelson says the team tried running Vice City on GTA V's timings and "everything felt too fast".

His explanation is pretty simple. "As the resolution of the worlds goes up, I think there are things you can't get away with in the same way," he told Edge. A sun that races across the sky, or traffic that whips past at arcade speed, looked fine in 2013. In a city built to this level of detail it looks wrong.

Days and nights that last longer

The clearest change is the clock. Rockstar lengthened the day and night cycle a lot, so sunsets hang around longer and nights give you more time to actually do night things. Edge doesn't give an exact length for a full in-game day, so we don't know the number yet.

For comparison (and this is our maths, not Rockstar's), a full day in GTA V takes 48 real minutes, because one game minute passes every two real seconds. Anyone who's tried to line up a sunset photo in Story Mode knows how quickly that golden hour goes. Vice City is a city sold on neon and pink skies, so giving those hours more room makes sense.

Slower cars and narrower roads

HotHardware's write-up of the Edge piece says Aaron Garbut, Nelson's fellow co-studio head, talks about slowing the game's vehicles and the wider simulation down too, to cut down on an uncanny valley feeling when everything runs at GTA V speed. Neither Edge summary we read gives an exact figure for how much slower.

The roads have shrunk as well. Nelson explains that GTA V's roads were especially wide, partly to make driving and turning easier, and GTA 6 narrows them for more believable proportions.

Put those together and driving changes character. Narrower streets and slower traffic mean less room to slalom at 120mph through downtown, more clipped mirrors, more reason to actually look at the junction. If you've played Red Dead Redemption 2, you know the feeling Rockstar seems to be after: a world where getting somewhere is part of the fun, and rushing has a cost. Here's the honest caveat, though. Nobody outside Rockstar has driven it yet, so how sluggish it feels in your hands is still a guess.

An order of magnitude more interiors

Garbut also told Edge the game has "an order of magnitude more interiors" than Rockstar's earlier games. That's roughly ten times as many, if you take the phrase literally. Edge says they're dressed to fit whoever lives or works there, with personal belongings and photos lying around, and HotHardware quotes Garbut saying "any random location" is hand-detailed.

This is the change I'd be most excited about. In GTA V most of Los Santos is a shell (you can drive past a thousand buildings and only walk into a handful). Red Dead 2 went further with its shops, saloons and cabins, but it was a much emptier world. If Vice City's apartment blocks and strip malls really open up, a slower car stops being a drawback, because the interesting stuff is no longer a 2km drive away. It might be behind the next door.

The map size framing

On size, Edge repeats that Leonida is roughly twice the size of GTA V's map. It also says the total landmass, counting Vice City and the land around it, is nearly as big as GTA IV, GTA V and Red Dead 2's playable maps combined. That second line is about land, not every bit of it being explorable, so we'd lean on the twice-GTA V figure. Our map size page keeps all the comparisons in one place, and our earlier map piece covers the Red Dead 2 comparison from previews.

Bigger map, slower cars and longer days could easily add up to a game that drags. Rockstar's bet is that density covers it. We'll find out on 19 November.