GTA 6 Seems Impossible – How Will It Even Run on a Base PS5?

The more information we get about GTA 6, the more I wonder: how will this game even run on a PS5? How will it run on an Xbox Series X? It seems like a miracle we’re even getting 30 fps, honestly, because the number of systems at play here is insane.

So, I decided to write about it, highlighting just how far the series has come. I’ll share with you my experiences with past GTA games on the various systems I played them on for a fun little trip down nostalgia lane, and talk a bit about all the things we can expect in GTA 6, and why it shouldn’t even be possible.

Let’s get into it.

Gaming in the 90s and Beyond

Gaming in the 90s was something else. For one, you didn’t have to wait over a decade for new entries in a franchise. The original GTA launched alongside Final Fantasy 7 in 1997, and GTA 2 launched in 1999, alongside Final Fantasy 8. I only mention the Final Fantasy titles because they were such enormous games, with playtimes of over 60 hours for most people.

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But during this period, gaming was a grossly expensive hobby. First, you had to drop $299 for a PlayStation, which is around $600 today. Sounds reasonable when you think of the PS5, but then you also had to shell out $40-50 a game, which is $80-100 today, adjusted for inflation.

So, when I asked my parents if I could pretty please get a PlayStation back then, the firm answer was “we have PlayStation at home,” which referred to an old Nintendo knockoff that only booted up when the planets were aligned and the weather was nice. Still, I did enjoy Battle City and Super Mario and all of that – but all my friends were talking about how amazing this PlayStation was. Only a few kids had one at that point, though.

In the year 2000, I discovered GTA 2 on a school computer. We could pay a couple of bucks and play for thirty minutes during a school event. Needless to say, I spent the entire day there, using up all my cash. And later that same year, I got my very own PlayStation for my 12th birthday, along with Final Fantasy 7.

I later owned both GTA and GTA 2 on PS1. And then GTA 3 dropped just a year later, and having just got a PS1, I could hardly expect my parents to upgrade me to the shiny new console. I would have to wait. However, we did get an old PC from a work colleague of my dad.

My brother, eight years my senior, somehow got his hands on a copy of GTA 3, and we installed that bad boy on our new PC. Only we had to basically clear out the 6GB hard drive, or the game simply wouldn’t install. When it did, it was time to play.

We got a very solid 5-ish fps as we watched Claude try to make his way across a bridge, before the car somehow caught on fire after we went flying through the air. Perhaps whatever we hit simply didn’t render yet? I don’t remember; the point is, we couldn’t play GTA 3 until much later on.

When GTA San Andreas came out, I had my PS2, I had money saved up, and I grabbed it at the first opportunity. I spent countless hours in all the GTA games since, missing out on GTA 4 for a few months because of not having a gaming system at all when it launched, but finally playing it later. Still my favorite.

I got GTA 5 at launch, and I’m getting GTA 6 at launch. But alright, we’ve taken a stroll down “gaming in the 90s and early 2000s memory lane,” so let’s talk about these games a bit, building up to why GTA 6 shouldn’t be able to run on most of the consoles it’s arriving on.

Almost Every GTA Game Was Special

The first GTA games may not have been mind-blowing 3D masterpieces, but they were unique at the time. Most games would give you a path to walk, and you’d walk that path, stage after stage, until you died or beat the game. GTA and GTA 2 let you run wild. There was precious little story to speak of, and you just sort of had your fun in a sandbox world.

GTA 3 changed that, being the first 3D GTA game, and even though the story was linear and nothing special, the game itself was a massive leap forward considering it launched just two years after GTA 2. I missed GTA Vice City, but that was also such a special game. I did try to play it after San Andreas, but it felt like a huge step backwards at the time, and I just couldn’t get used to the jank after playing the more refined story of CJ.

Speaking of the story, it’s hard to beat San Andreas there. It was a really cool story with emotional weight and fantastic characters, but somehow, Rockstar improved with GTA 4, producing what is still the best story in the series. Niko is just a fantastic protagonist in every way.

GTA 5 was, in my opinion, pretty mid. The online aspect was great when it launched, though it was eventually ruined by flying bikes and murderous jet pilots in every session. Still, though, GTA 5 had actual animals on the map, and not just birds. But it was so far from perfect.

Animals would clearly just spawn in when you came to the area, and the same with NPCs and traffic. There was no real simulation; it was all just a show for the character. There’s very little persistence in GTA 5, and even then, the game at launch felt a lot emptier than it does now (mostly because it was).

Rain clouds would form above your head when it was time to rain, and they would dissipate when it was time for sunshine. The sky looked amazing, and the game was graphically insane, but it is to GTA 6 what a child’s second-grade finger painting is to an original Picasso.

And that finally brings us to why GTA 6 is an impossible game.

The Biggest Map Rockstar has Ever Created

The GTA 6 map is set to be about twice the size of GTA 5’s map, but that’s no achievement if it’s an empty wasteland. And that’s where the biggest difference comes in – the GTA 6 map will be the densest Rockstar has ever created, by a long shot. Not only is Vice City twice the size of Los Santos, but the outlying areas and suburban regions in GTA 6 will be 11 times larger than in GTA 5.

This gives us a far denser map, with much more to see and do. Mount Chilliad is no longer there to take up like 70% of the map.

Traffic and NPC density will be a lot higher, too, along with many times more enterable interiors. NPCs will also be more varied than ever, and with over 170 animal species, as confirmed in the Game Informer cover story, there’s already a lot going on here.

Now, add to this the most advanced weather system ever seen in gaming, including persistent puddles, rain and wind reacting dynamically with the world, and real clouds that roll across the map instead of appearing and disappearing for the player’s convenience, and I just don’t see how this game isn’t going to wreck our gaming systems to get 30 fps.

I feel sorry for myself as a base PS5 player; I can’t even imagine the Series S running this thing.

Finally, and now we cross over into rumor territory, there are the whispers of persistent world damage. So, if there’s a serious vehicle accident, an explosion at a gas station, or maybe even a rocket through a building window, this damage is rumored to persist. Actual work crews will need to come and fix the damage in real time, tow cars, clean roads, etc.

Given what we’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t put it past Rockstar, but I just don’t see how this system will operate alongside all the other systems in the game, especially if the animals are as well-done as RDR 2, with actual routines and behaviors and such.

My poor, poor PS5.

It Might Be Scary, But I Can’t Wait to Test it Out

So yeah, there’s every chance GTA 6 blows up gaming consoles to eke out just 30 fps, but I still can’t wait to try it out. Rockstar has always been fantastic at optimization, so I don’t know what sort of witchcraft they’ve been up to this time to make all these systems work flawlessly together, but it’s going to be something special, isn’t it?

I mean, there’s even working social media in the game as well, where NPCs post about events around the city dynamically. It’s insane.

It really does feel like GTA 6 will change the world of gaming forever. As a lifelong gamer, I can only hope that the change is positive and benefits gamers first.

What confirmed feature are you most excited about in GTA 6?