dexerto just ranked rockstar's best games ever and it got me thinking about where GTA VI will land
Saw this piece over on Dexerto where they went through the entire Rockstar catalog and tried to rank the best of the best. It's a cool read because it actually goes all the way back to the DMA Design days — like, before GTA was even a thing, these folks were making Lemmings and some sci-fi shooter called Menace in the 80s. Wild to think the same studio that had us guiding little green-haired dudes off cliffs eventually gave us Vice City and the Wild West.
a studio built on reinvention
The article traces how Rockstar came together after Take-Two grabbed BMG Interactive in '98, but the DNA goes deeper with DMA Design out of Scotland. The point they make is that Rockstar isn't just the GTA factory or the cowboy game people — they've had this whole trajectory of genre-hopping and evolving that most studios never pull off.
And honestly? That context hits different right now. We're months away from GTA VI and the weight of everything Rockstar has learned since those Lemmings days is basically riding on November 19. Every mechanic, every open-world trick, every storytelling swing — it's all been building to Leonida.
so where does the list land?
They go through the full catalog making their picks, and I'm not gonna spoil the whole ranking, but it definitely sparked some opinions. Like, any time you put GTA titles against RDR against the older cult stuff, people are gonna fight about it.
What I keep coming back to is: where is GTA VI gonna slot into this conversation in a year? Are we looking at the new #1, or is that bar just impossibly high at this point?
Drop your personal top 3 Rockstar games below and let's see if anyone can agree on anything.
Source: Dexerto · Curated content.
Honestly my top 3 are RDR2, GTA V, and the original Vice City — but that's entirely map-driven. RDR2's frontier still hasn't been topped for environmental storytelling. What gives me hope for GTA VI is the sheer variety in Leonida. Los Santos was gorgeous but the wilderness felt like set dressing. Here we've got Grassrivers swamps, Mount Kalaga, Port Gellhorn, the Keys — that's real biome diversity. If Rockstar actually integrates the geography into mission design instead of just using it as backdrop? Could crack top 2 easy.
If Rockstar actually integrates the geography into mission design instead of just using it as backdrop?
Hard agree on the map point, but here's what'll actually determine where VI lands for me: the economy loop design. GTA Online's profit-per-hour meta was a mess for years — nightclub income shouldn't take irl weeks to feel rewarding, and the MC business slog before the buff was genuinely painful. If Leonida's business systems are tight from day one, with cayo-level heist pacing baked in rather than patched together over eight years? That's what pushes it past V. RDR2 had great story but the money loop was basically nonexistent. Give me coherent earnings curves and I'm sold.
Everyone's mapping economies and biomes, but what'll actually decide VI's legacy is whether Lucia and Jason become characters we carry forever. Think about it — Heat works not because of the heist mechanics but because McCauley and Neil are etched into you. Rockstar's best games are their best stories: RDR2 lands at #1 everywhere because Arthur's arc destroys people. If Lucia gets even half that depth, if the Duval-Caminos dynamic has that Mann-level tension between devotion and self-destruction, we're talking new #1. If it's just V's three-protagonist shell game with better graphics, it settles somewhere respectable but distant from the top. Story is the ceiling here.