GTA 6 sounds like an RPG – so why deny it?

PATCH NOTES 2.11.2026 – GTA 6 is launching this month, and Edge Magazine's exclusive special unearthed loads of fresh dirt on it. Jason and Lucia's player-defined relationship is the most earth-shattering revelation of all to me, and it's making me look at GTA 6 a whole other way. Namely, as an RPG.

What's happening with GTA 6 this week?

• Edge Magazine's GTA 6 exclusive has given us plenty of fresh insights about the game's characters and open world.
• GTA 6's Jason and Lucia can be allies instead of lovers, and players can break them up if desired.
• Rockstar says that the game was also inspired by a Skyrim-like sense of discovery and that "You can go anywhere, [to] any random location".

Why is this happening now?

• Grand Theft Auto has always been considered an action sandbox with fixed narrative elements.
• As GTA 6 doubles down on player agency, it's pushing the franchise further into RPG territory.

Meta Shift

• Jason and Lucia's relationship is the biggest clue as to how RPG-like GTA 6 will be.

The biggest thing I learned from Edge's GTA 6 special is that Jason and Lucia don't need to be a couple. Despite all the GTA 6 trailers and promotional imagery leaning so heavily into their Bonnie and Clyde dynamic, Rockstar lead Rob Nelson spilled to Edge that the two actually kick the game off as exes, "wanting to be together, and wanting to give this relationship of theirs another shot. But, as the game progresses, it's yours to keep or yours to lose."

This changes everything I knew about GTA 6, both in terms of what I was expecting of its protagonists and what their established relationship (or lack thereof) tells us about the game's genre. Giving players so much control over Jason and Lucia's relationship feels like it has the power to change the foundational context of the game. With the duo as a romantic couple, the stakes are higher – we all do stupid things for love, like robbing banks or something. As pals, this may as well be GTA 5 all over again.

It's a relinquishing of narrative control that I didn't expect to see from Rockstar, even with GTA 6 being the studio's biggest deviation from the franchise's core structure yet. Choice and consequence are two of the defining aspects of the best RPGs, even without character leveling or skill trees. We'd already seen a departure from more rigid, preordained narratives in GTA 5, which had three endings to choose from. But if Rockstar is giving us control over how much its heroes love, loathe, miss, or care about each other, it's sounded even more open-ended and changeable than ever. Not unlike, say, an RPG.

But what's in a name? Genre isn't everything, true enough. However, when it comes to GTA, it's important in charting the growth of the series. The move toward a player-divined world, from characters to how they approach the world and one another, feels like a paradigmatic shift for Rockstar, actively growing and reshaping our concept of what a GTA game feels and looks like. It's an evolution of GTA 4 and 5's choice-based endings, the studio's earliest flirtations with putting a greater emphasis on player choice.

With more lifestyle simulation elements being introduced atop a more nuanced relationship system in general (including video-gamified social media) Grand Theft Auto 6's more flexible parameters and RPG-lite mechanics finally make it sound like something more than a violent crime sim. Though, I guess it is kinda in the name…

Patch Notes summary

With GTA 6 almost here, Rockstar is shucking off the shackles of genre puritanism to make it the most sophisticated, RPG-like entry in the whole series. Jason and Lucia's relationship will be player-determined, making their dynamic just as much yours to establish as the open world will be yours to explore. The countdown to GTA 6 for the month of November is now truly underway, yet somehow, all this just proves there's always more to learn about one of the biggest games of the decade.

GTA 6 is just one of many upcoming PS5 games, but it's probably the biggest on the list....