If GTA 6 is as good as we're all hoping, what does that mean for every other open world game?

We've been waiting so long that the hype has its own gravity at this point. But let's say Rockstar actually pulls it off. Leonida is as alive and reactive as the trailers hint, the NPCs have routines that make RDR2 look like a tech demo, and the world just feels dense in a way nothing else does. What happens to the rest of the industry after that?

GTA V already warped expectations for a decade. Every open world game since 2013 has been measured against it, sometimes unfairly. But if VI is the leap we're all expecting, that bar doesn't just move, it gets launched into orbit. Studios making their own open world games are going to have a much harder time getting away with static cities and braindead NPCs. Players will have a new reference point for what 'alive' actually means.

I don't think it'll change things overnight. Most devs don't have Rockstar's budget or timeline. But the standard for what a AAA open world should feel like is about to get rewritten, and games that can't even approach that level of detail are going to feel dated real fast. It might be less about copying GTA 6 and more about other studios realizing they need to find their own way to make worlds feel responsive, or risk looking like they shipped a last-gen game in 2027.

I'm mostly curious how long it takes for anyone to even come close. Probably not until the next generation of hardware, honestly.

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Source: r/GTA6 · Curated content.