- Bloomberg's Jason Schreier says Rockstar Games spent years developing an alternative weapon system for Grand Theft Auto 6
- He says, "They wanted GTA 6's weapon system to be more like Red Dead," with a reimagined weapon wheel
- However, after years of iteration, Rockstar stuck to a classic design
Rockstar Games reportedly spent years developing a new weapon interface for Grand Theft Auto 6, but eventually stuck with the classic weapon wheel the series is known for.
As reported by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who shared a YouTube video about his visit to Rockstar North, co-studio head and head of development Rob Nelson said that the team wanted the game's weapon loadout system to be more like Red Dead Redemption 2 than GTA 5.
"They wanted GTA 6's weapon system to be more like Red Dead, where you couldn't just carry an unlimited number of guns," Schreier said, which was "a little more realistic."
In Red Dead Redemption 2, loadouts are tied to your horse, and players can only carry a certain number of weapons on their person at a time, whether a pistol or a shotgun, while the rest is stored on your saddle.
The team wanted to recreate a similar system for GTA 6 by having storage tied to the player's car and a limited loadout of weapons that players can carry at any given time, but wanted to reimagine the weapon wheel.
"So the idea that they were thinking was like, well, if we use a weapon wheel, is that just going to remind people of all these blank spots in it? It'll remind people of what they can't actually do, what they can't carry. And so maybe we shouldn't use a weapon wheel," Schreier explained.
"And so they spent months, if not years, trying a million different things that would replace the weapon wheel."
Schreier revealed that Rockstar tried "trays and webs and all sorts of different things in the UI" and other ways to replace the weapon wheel, but in the end, the team ended up back at the weapon wheel.
"They tried not having one," he said. "They tried all these different iterations on this. After all that, they just wound up back at a weapon wheel, and in the final game it's just a weapon wheel again."
Schreier believes this was part of the "dark periods" of development that "led to some problems for the game", as developers continuously reworked prototypes for the UI, only to end back at square one.
However, he added that "really ended when the game started coalescing, I would say around [the] end of 2022, beginning of 2023, something like that is where they really started to see it all come together."
"As I mentioned in the story, the first trailer that they released in December 2023 was really a guiding light for a lot of the people on the team to see, 'Oh, this is what the game is going to look like,'" Schreier said.
Rockstar recently released the cinematic GTA 6 launch trailer, ahead of GTA 6's launch on November 19. The game is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X, and Series S, with a new report claiming the PC version could launch in early 2027.