The co-studio head of Rockstar North has revealed to IGN that the developer talked about potentially increasing the number of protagonists in Grand Theft Auto VI to four, which is double the amount it finally settled on.
Grand Theft Auto V notably featured three protagonists to switch between, namely Franklin, Michael and Trevor, who would work together during the story to pull off a series of heists. When out in the open world, players could freely jump between each character, while missions would often require you to switch tactically to another character at key intervals.
For GTA VI, Rob Nelson said that the Rockstar was “worried about diluting the amount of player time” with each character, and decided on two protagonists for the final product.
As the narrative unfolds, we’re quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character. After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of – do we do more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now? But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each and therefore player connection with those characters. So we decided to step in this direction of two characters in a relationship.
But then the question became: how do you make players feel like, ‘I love them both?’ Chemistry is a notoriously hard thing to do in any sort of entertainment. Either the characters and the actors that embody them have it – or they don’t. Everyone involved worked at that pretty hard. I think we’ve got it. I think we’ve got enough reaction within our team internally to where they feel great as individuals and together.
Grand Theft Auto VI is slated for release on November 19, 2026 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
[Source – IGN]