Cognition Dissemination: Here’s a Grand Theft Auto 6 Mission Idea
It’s difficult to understate just how massive the Grand Theft Auto 6 leak is. Screenshots and videos of a very-in-development alpha version of the game began surfacing very early on Sunday morning Eastern Time, deep into the weekend. They manifested just when Rockstar Games would be slow to respond to all the videos that popped up on YouTube and other video services, not to mention the massive number of tweets and message board posts. There was a time to be suspicious about whether the leak was authentic, but the attention to detail was staggering enough that it would have made for one of the most detailed fakes ever if that was the case. If there was any doubt, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier confirmed its authenticity though his sources within Rockstar, just before Rockstar themselves confirmed the breach.
To say this is all a wild situation is putting it lightly. The screens and the whopping 3.2GB worth of videos were enough to confirm rumors that circulated about the game in the last year. GTA6, at least as of this build, stars duo Lucia and Jason, a Bonnie and Clyde-style couple that makes a living from robbing people and establishments. The former is notably Latina, and the first playable female character in the franchise’s campaign. It also clearly set in Vice City (Grand Theft Auto’s version of Miami, Florida), with a number of locations from the screenshots being almost identical to those from the titular Grand Theft Auto: Vice City albeit with significant graphical upgrades. It looks very much in the same style of game as the previous GTA games, with perhaps some mechanics upgrades from Red Dead Redemption 2.
Rockstar’s developers are undoubtedly pissed at the hacker, but there’s a minor and petty way in which they can get back at them, outside them being arrested for stealing and attempted extortion. It’s time for them to start planning a mission that involves taking down a hacker for a seedy client, before they leak critical information to the insatiable public. This would be good for one of the more involved side quests the game would have, because making this mandatory would be a bit too on the nose despite it being obvious as to why such a mission would be in the game. There would be no coincidences here.
The questline would work well considering the kind of franchise GTA is, and the tone of previous installments that this one is set to retain. GTA has a history of its protagonists being supreme pieces of shit, and a couple that engages in robberies would certainly qualify. There’s no indication that the player can choose to act more valiantly, considering that the franchise isn’t an RPG. No leaked details suggest that this installment will have additions that significant.
I’m sure that I’m not the only one who has suggested the idea by this time, considering it’s been nearly two days since the leaks started and the backlash towards them. But I also don’t care about that; this is such a worthwhile idea for a mission that multiple people should request it. GTA has never hesitated to make fun of itself, and thrives on featuring parodies of real-life situations. This would work perfectly.
The big concern, of course, is whether they’ll have time to implement it. The developers have undoubtedly been busy at work on this game since shortly after RDR2 released in 2018. I’m under no delusion that this would be easy to put into the game at this point, but that would depend on just how complete it is. The video filenames in the leak have 2021 and 2022 dates on them, but the build, which appears to be from a PlayStation 4 devkit, shown might be older than that. Suspicion suggests this version might be as old as 2019, the now-whimsical pre-pandemic era. The game could be in the later stages of development now, for all we know.
Rockstar, in their statement acknowledging the leak, clarified how they “do not anticipate any disruption to [their] live game services nor any long-term effect on the development of [their] ongoing projects.” Is this true, though? The top intent of this statement could be to relax shareholders undoubtedly nervous about what this means, especially with the game’s source code potentially being out there. If the source code is swirling around, a copious amount of time would be required to change it. When, for instance, the source code was leaked for Half-Life 2 before it released, it took a one-year delay thanks to Valve’s need to rebuild it. Given how lengthy game development is these days, a GTA6 delay would be at least twice that — maybe even three times the amount. Let’s hope that’s not necessary.
It will take time to fully digest the fallout from the leak. Rockstar will undoubtedly get better security to prevent future hacks, but this might stretch into the executives using this as an excuse to curtail the company’s work-at-home policies normalized during the pandemic. In the meantime, they’ll hopefully have the opportunity to implement the questline suggested above. If it’s not possible to include this for the launch game, it could perhaps be added down the line provided the rumors about a perpetually expanding in-game world are correct.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
