Best Open-World Innovations GTA 6 Should Include

Grand Theft Auto 5 was released in 2013, just before the new consoles hit. It was a long time in the making, and it sold incredibly well. Rockstar made a game that is seemingly timeless, as players keep buying to go through the campaign, mess around in Los Santos, or engage in multiplayer.

Things That Could Ruin GTA 6 (But Rockstar Can Avoid)

Rockstar can let GTA 6 bake in the sun as long as they want, so long as they use enough suntan lotion and avoid these sunburn-like mistakes.

Posts

By Tristan Jurkovich

Can Grand Theft Auto 6 have over a decade’s worth of staying power like its predecessor? If Rockstar wants its next GTA title to be an even bigger hit, it should look at what open-world games have become in the past decade and learn to innovate with the best of them.

A Glider

A Link To The Past

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild reshaped open-world games in a lot of ways, but the most fun feature was the paraglider. With it, players could jump down from any surface, be it a mountain tower, and glide to safety. There are some open-world games that have borrowed from this example, like Rise of the Ronin and Palworld, but not nearly enough have.

If any open-world game could help increase its popularity further, it would be GTA 6. The game doesn’t seem to be obsessed with tall structures or mountains, but either way, it would still be fun to glide around the many new biomes of this expanded Vice City. There seems to be plenty of other ways to get around in GTA 6 after all, from kayaking to racing on bikes.

Branching Storylines

Less Missions, More Choices

Since the series began in 1997, Rockstar has been making each new entry bigger and bigger. Wider areas, sleeker cars, more mature stories, and tons of missions. GTA 5 had a very lengthy campaign, and while it seems like the trend would be to make GTA 6 even bigger in terms of story, there is a better innovation to consider.

6 Grand Theft Auto Games Most Fans Forgot Existed

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto has produced some of the most popular games ever, along with a few titles that have been forgotten.

Posts

Instead of more missions, Rockstar could implement branching storylines, which would affect characters, including the relationship between Jason and Lucia. Games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt stayed relevant because players loved seeing how their decisions branched off beyond just having a choice or two in the final mission.

Campaign Multiplayer

Jason And Lucia Hand In Hand

So far, it’s unclear if both Jason and his girlfriend, Lucia, will be playable. It’s safe to assume Lucia can be played as well, but Rockstar hasn’t confirmed things. Having two protagonists would not be that weird for a GTA game, as GTA 5 had three protagonists who could be switched between while exploring the open world.

One innovation GTA 6 could implement would be full campaign co-op, giving players the opportunity to play Jason and Lucia in the same mission, or where it makes sense. Not many open-world games have co-op, with Borderlands 4 being a prime recent example.

Replay Missions

Keeping Up With Tradition

Borderlands 4 had a great innovation for open-world games via replayable missions. Not only could players go back into their favorite missions, they could also farm them for rewards. It sounds like such a simple feature, but there are very few examples of open-world games with mission or chapter selects.

It should be noted that GTA 5 has mission replays as a feature, so it’s hard to imagine Rockstar would not put it in their next game, but it’s impossible to predict what the company will do. GTA 6 may simply be too large to incorporate an element like that, but hopefully not.

Create Your Own Compound

Not Just Buying And Renting

The GTA series has included ways to buy or rent properties in the past, most notably Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. There has never been a way for players to build and customize their own compound from scratch in a main game. Based on trailers so far, it seems like Jason works for someone who owns a lot of properties, which could easily segue into players getting a plot of land all their own.

It would be even greater if the game allowed players to choose one of the many biomes to create their place, from Mount Kalaga National Park to Vice City itself. Jason and Lucia are a couple, so getting them a home of their own would fit with their rags-to-riches story. Plenty of open-world games have building mechanics of some sort, from Dragon Quest Builders 2 to Starfield.

Leveling Up

Bring In Skill Points And Stat Increases

Not every open-world game is an RPG, but many of them have started to at least integrate RPG elements. For example, Ghost of Yotei gives players ways to improve their character through skill points and performing mini-games to increase stats. The GTA series is no stranger to this either, as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had a sort of leveling-up system where doing certain tasks would increase tasks, even taking into account food intake.

Why There Are Almost No Games Like Grand Theft Auto Anymore

The heyday of Grand Theft Auto clones has ended, but it could return sometime soon, especially if GTA 6 is a massive success.

Posts

By Tristan Jurkovich

San Andreas is the one outlier for the main games, but GTA 5’s online mode did have a leveling-up system. GTA 6 doesn’t have to go full RPG, but a way to increase stats would go a long way in making the game more interactive.

Difficulty Modes

A Key Feature Still Absent From GTA Games

One of the most common settings in a video game is the difficulty modes. The main entries in the GTA series have been resistant to them for years, but GTA 5 did have a way to skip past certain sections of missions if players failed them enough, which also worked in Red Dead Redemption 2.

It was a good workaround at the time, but adding straight difficulty settings to GTA 6 would invite more players in. This could work both ways, as the hardcore would get the opportunity to play on more challenging settings. This request goes beyond open-world games and GTA 6, as games of every genre need to start adding difficulty modes.

Rating block community and brand ratings Image