Grand Theft Auto 6 is making big changes to the classic GTA formula. Escaping from the police is more challenging, the combat is more exciting, and the narrative feels more adult and mature. But perhaps the biggest change in GTA 6 is that, for the first time in the nearly 30-year-old franchise named after the car theft crime, it will actually be complicated and interesting to hijack new vehicles. After the big GTA 6 trailer dropped yesterday on Netflix, we also saw multiple trailers from websites and content creators who were able to check out the game last month and talk to Rockstar about it. And something that came up in almost every trailer was the fact that Rockstar has put a lot of time and effort into expanding and evolving the act of stealing cars. In previous GTA games, you simply walked to a parked car, pressed a button, and climbed in. Maybe your character would have to break the window to unlock it. But that was all. Stealing cars in GTA 6 is not that simple. “We’ve put some layers of layering on the vehicles,” Rob Nelson, head of development at Rockstar North, told IGN. “Previously, you could just press triangle to auto-engage and steal any vehicle you wanted and take off. We felt like that left a lot of gameplay potential on the table in terms of progression and decision-making for players. So now, you start the game, and there are certain parked cars that you can’t access until you progress a little further into the story and acquire certain tools to get into them.” This was a point Nelson brought up while speaking to GTA YouTuber The Gaming Gorilla, explaining that you’ll need different tools depending on the car you’re trying to steal. For example, as seen in Thursday’s gameplay trailer, Jason and Lucia can use a “Slim Jim” tool to pick a car lock and steal it. But this only works on older vehicles. And even if you just break the window of a newer car to unlock it, you might not even be able to plug it in and walk away. ©Rockstar Games / Kotaku “You don’t need anything to connect,” Nelson told TGG. “But not all vehicles can be connected. Some vehicles need a key cloner to start. You can break the window and get in, but you can’t start without the key cloner.” Of course, this is still GTA, so Nelson made it clear that even from the beginning, players can run up to fancy cars while stopped at a traffic light or signal and take out the driver and take the vehicle, without needing to clone keys or tools. But the car may still have a tracker that police could use to locate it. So you’ll still have to deal with that problem. And stolen cars are not immediately yours. You will need to register them and store them in a garage with limited space to turn them into a personal vehicle that you can keep. Otherwise, they will disappear when you restart the game. In a different preview posted by IGN, Nelson explained that players will have access to an in-game phone app, called Waink, that will allow them to scan a car to learn more information about it. “For example, [Waink] “It tells me this car is locked, has an alarm, and has no tracker,” Nelson explained while playing for IGN. “It also tells me how much it’s worth if I’m going to take it to a Pay n’ Spray or a specialized car fence, and how much it would cost me to register it myself. So, for example, this car needs a key cloner. This other car will just need a Slim Jim. So we’ve added a lot of fun little tools that you need or mechanics that you need to perform these actions that were previously binary.” “I think it gives more meaning to all the vehicles and you need to pay a little more attention to what you’re doing,” Nelson added. And I have to agree. It’s always been strange that Grand Theft Auto, a series named after car theft, never made stealing cars fun, exciting, or interesting. It was simply, as Nelson explained, a “binary action.” You pressed the button, an animation played, and then you had the car. In GTA 6, however, stealing cars seems like something that will require planning and skill. Maybe a really old, beat-up piece of shit is easy to hijack. But nicer cars will involve more steps, and pulling off a successful hijack of a badass supercar will be much more rewarding in GTA 6 than in previous games in the series. I can’t wait to ruin it by stealing a car and having a dozen cops chase me when Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox.
