In an interview with French magazine Trois Couleurs, Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson said GTA 6 deliberately avoids pure photorealism. Confirmed The aim, he explained, is to give an impression of realism rather than copy real life, and to keep the game on the right side of the uncanny valley, where things that look almost-but-not-quite real start to feel off.
Why hold back?
The practical reason is longevity. Games that chase maximum realism tend to age badly, because the closer an image gets to reality, the more obvious every shortcut becomes a few years later. A slightly stylised look, which the interviewer compared to the feel of a comic book, ages more gracefully. Nelson agreed that the team talks about this a lot and deliberately avoids hyper-photorealistic assets.
The same thinking applies to gameplay: the goal is for systems to feel believable and consistent, not to simulate everything exactly.
Not a new approach
Rockstar has always picked style over strict realism. San Andreas leaned into exaggeration, GTA IV was grounded but stylised, and even Red Dead Redemption 2 used painterly lighting rather than cold photorealism. Given that GTA V is still selling thirteen years after launch, building GTA 6 to look good for a decade makes obvious sense.
In the same interview, Nelson described how Rockstar starts a new GTA by choosing a location and visiting it, and how the team tries to include only cultural references that will still make sense years later, so the game feels like a time capsule rather than a collection of old memes.