Some of GTA 6's big ideas are likely hiding in GTA 5, ex-Rockstar dev predicts – and you only need to look at GTA 4 to see why: "I'd be incredibly surprised if they don't do anything like that"

While we don't know much about GTA 6, it's assumed that we'll be playing as dual protagonists, Lucia and Jason, in similar fashion to Michael, Franklin and Trevor from GTA 5. According to a former developer on the series, this structure of multiple perspectives stems from a single level in Grand Theft Auto 4, where the outline for future installments was written.

Rob Carr, a former audio engineer at Rockstar Games, revealed in an interview with Reece "Kiwi Talkz" Reilly (per Dexerto) that Three Leaf Clover, the last mission from Patrick McReary, set the foundation for what came after. "All three characters connect in the middle," he says. "Looking back now, it's easy to see how that’s the blueprint of the three-player system in GTA 5. Only when you look back at that are you like, 'Oh, yeah. It's actually really quite obvious.'"

In Three Leaf Clover, Niko Bellic, Johnny Klebitz and Luis Lopez commit a bank robbery together. Part of completion involves helping all three escape unscathed and away from police handcuffs. You can see how Rockstar was teetering on the idea of having disparate characters contribute to the narrative, something the studio would lean heavily into for the fifth game.

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Although he's since left the studio, now working for Redhill games in Finland, Carr believes there'll be some clever evolution of what GTA 5 offers in its upcoming sequel. "There will be things that they have in GTA 5 that they will have in GTA 6 that you will look at and go, 'Ugh, we should have seen that coming. Oh, that’s really clever,'" he adds.

"There are things they did in GTA 5 that they will definitely want to expand on and use as either a core mechanic or a main plot point or something in GTA 6," he continues. "I'd be incredibly surprised if they don’t do anything like that."

Previously scheduled to come out late last year, 2025, Grand Theft Auto 6 was delayed to May 2026, before being pushed back again to November 19, 2026. We've had two trailers so far, and though they've given us some indication of the plot, main characters, and the setting of Leonida, we know remarkably little about how it'll actually play.

Since there are two perspectives at the center of things, we can infer more active switching between them and crafty ways we'll be able to control both, building on the systems of GTA 5. How that manifests is another question, and it's anyone's guess when the next trailer will arrive to tell us more. If Three Leaf Clover tells us anything, it's that there'll be quite a bit of violence, some intentional, some less so.

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