Rockstar Games has explained why GTA 6 will avoid directly referencing real political figures, events and movements.
In a new interview with Love Magazine, Rockstar’s senior vice president of narrative, Rupert Humphries, discussed the studio’s approach to political satire in GTA 6. According to Humphries, the goal is to make Leonida feel modern and recognizable without tying the game too closely to the exact political climate of the real world.
Rockstar has used political themes in previous GTA games, but Humphries pointed out that the series has rarely focused directly on national politics. GTA 4, for example, heavily incorporated post 9/11 themes, including Homeland Security and the Patriot Act, because those issues were closely connected to the setting and time period.
For GTA 6, Rockstar wants to take a different approach. Players will still encounter plenty of political elements throughout Leonida, including election signs, automated campaign calls, political advertisements and radio programs discussing current issues. However, these will exist within Rockstar’s own fictional version of Florida.
The studio also plans to make these topics much more exaggerated and ridiculous rather than simply copying real-world events. Rockstar wants to take an interesting issue, push its most absurd aspects to the extreme and turn them into satire.
Another major reason for this approach is the extremely long development cycle of GTA games. Rockstar has been working on GTA 6 for years, and the team knows that political trends can change dramatically before a game is released.
Humphries explained that Rockstar doesn’t want to include a trend simply because it happens to be popular for a few months. Instead, the developers focus on broader subjects that are likely to remain relevant, such as conspiracy theories, public reactions to strange events and modern cultural behavior.
This means GTA 6 may still have plenty to say about politics and contemporary society, but Rockstar appears to be creating its own exaggerated versions rather than directly recreating real people or events.