car theft in gta 6 is way more involved now, some cars are story locked

Rewatched the Extended Look and read the IGN preview with Rob Nelson playing the demo, and I completely missed how much they changed stealing cars.

In the video Jason walks up to an old beater and gets two prompts. Smash the window or use a slim jim. The slim jim has its own timing thing you have to hit, so it's not just a button press.

Nelson said some parked cars are just off limits at the start. You get the tools as the story goes. Old cars you can do with the slim jim. Newer ones with electronic keys need a key cloner, and you have to get your hands on one first. Carjacking someone in traffic still works from the beginning though.

Your phone has an app called WAINK that scans a car before you touch it. It tells you if there's a tracker, what the car's worth at a fence, and how much it costs to register it as yours. Some of those trackers ping the cops if you go under a certain speed, which sounds like a nightmare in a chase.

I also read that cops only get called if someone sees you or an alarm goes off. If that's true, sneaking around actually pays off for once.

Not sure how I feel yet. Great for the fancy cars, kind of annoying when I just want a ride. I'll probably end up carjacking most of the time anyway, but the WAINK app seems like a cool way to scope out a score before you commit.

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Source: r/GTA6 · Curated content.

Back in my day you pressed triangle and the car was yours. Now there's a timing minigame on a slim jim. Progress, I guess.

The tracker pinging the cops if you drop under a certain speed sounds stressful. I saw a movie about that once. It had a bus and Keanu Reeves. Anyway, I get maybe an hour after the kids go to bed, and I don't want to spend it holding a steady speed across town in a stolen sedan because my phone told me to.

The part I actually like is cops only getting called if someone sees you. Stealth paying off in a GTA is new. Scope the car, wait for the street to clear, take it slow. That fits how I play. Boring works.

When I'm in a hurry though, I'm yanking somebody out at a red light like it's 2001. Some habits don't die.