Am I the only one who thinks GTA 6’s graphics look disappointing?

The long awaited first trailer for GTA 6 is here and I’m excited with what’s been presented to me. The setting and characters appear to be an interesting evolution on the established formula with a female lead character and a return to the sun kissed beaches of Vice City. With that said, I can’t shake the feeling that the upcoming open world game doesn’t look especially dazzling in what’s been presented which is odd considering the visual prestige of the studio to date. 

It’s hard to gauge the visuals of GTA 6 because of the mixture of what could be pre-rendered cutscenes and in-game footage, but the visual fidelity on display doesn’t seem as cutting edge as the studio has delivered before. The character models as seen in the trailer aren’t bad by any means, with strong detailing and facial animations in the brief clip in the talk with the correctional officer, however, that doesn’t extend to the rest of proceedings. Here’s what we know about the game engine of GTA 6.

While the environments range from fine to pretty damn good, the game looks to be showing the limitations of the RAGE engine when highlighting people on the beach. While it’s a good amount of crowd density, should it be natively rendered, the people themselves look like they’ve been plucked out of a game from 10 years ago. So much so that in a few instances it looks as though this could have been spliced from a GTA Online mission and I would have been none the wiser. 

The GTA 6 trailer does a good job of hiding some of the closer up visuals by adding in filters which appear to be aping social media platforms such as Instagram Live and TikTok. The busier sections involving vehicles look fine, however, there’s little here that shows that the game will be this massive leap from its predecessor in this department and considering the decade long wait for any shred of information, I can’t help but be disappointed. 

First impressions matter

It’s important for me to state that when Rockstar releases a first trailer for any of its games, they tend to be rough around the edges. The first Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer from seven years ago is a far cry from what the end product was but I’d argue that the lighting, foliage density, and character models and character models put what’s been seen from GTA 6 so far to shame. While I’m sure that we’ll get a more in-depth look at the next big open world crime shooter next year, and leading up to the supposed 2025 release date, this first impression of the game looks to already be showing its age which surprises me. 

For now we know that GTA 6 will be coming to the Xbox Series X and the PS5. This has now been confirmed on the Rockstar Games official website with no current mention of a PC release to come. If the previous game, GTA V, is any indication, that means we’ll likely see the console release come first with a potential PC release coming around a year or two later. This was also the case with Red Dead Redemption 2 which launched on previous generation consoles in 2018 before getting a PC release around a year later. 

Factoring the supposed release date, that means the Xbox Series X and PS5 will be five years old by the time the next big Rockstar game debuts, a good chunk through their life spans. Typically, modern consoles last around seven years before being succeeded. We saw with this the Xbox One (2013)  to the Xbox Series X (2020) and a similar gap with the Xbox 360 (2005) and its successor. We’re especially concerned with how GTA will play on Xbox Series S.

Rockstar has a habit of releasing its games right at the tail end of a console’s lifespan as established with PC ports and the next generation versions being vastly improved. This is likely going to happen with GTA 6, too. Set to release sometime in 2025, likely towards the end of the year, we’ll be not too far from the announcements of successor hardware hitting the scene if history is to repeat itself and the market trends be consistent. I’m not too impressed by how the upcoming crime shooter looks in its current state, and it could be being held back by already ageing console hardware. 

I suppose that’s just a symptom of having such an elongated development cycle. Modern games now take so long to create that even the best development teams in the industry can’t keep up with the innovations happening with the hardware. According to Bloomberg, the game has been in development since 2014 which is around the start of the eighth console generation, a year after the Xbox One and PS4 debuted. By the time GTA 6 is out we’re looking at a dev time of about 11 years, so maybe it was never going to be able to hold up on the visual fidelity of its competitors. Time will tell when we see more of the game next year.