tire shooting looks fun but i'm worried it'll make police chases too easy

The tire shooting stuff from the extended look has been sitting with me since I watched it. It looks stupid fun, but I keep going back and forth on whether it'll actually work in practice.

Real life tire blowouts are way less dramatic than games make them. If someone shoots your tire during a chase, you usually don't even feel it for a few seconds. Air leaks out, steering gets a little heavier, and with modern stability control you can still pull over without flipping. So the whole 'shoot tire, car instantly spins and rolls' thing is pure movie logic.

But I'm not against it. Shooting tires in Just Cause was one of my favorite things to do, watching cars lose it and tumble never got old. GTA has always leaned into that kind of chaos, so I get why Rockstar kept it.

My actual worry is how it affects police pursuits. If every cop car can be disabled with one well placed shot, escaping might become way too easy. In the older games you had to work for it, use alleys, break line of sight, all that. Now it might just be pop two tires and drive off.

I think the balance should depend on how many vehicles are after you. When there's a huge swarm of cops, like those real videos where twenty cruisers are tailing one truck, letting every one of them flip is fine because more just keep coming. But if it's only three or four units, being able to take them all out in seconds would kill the tension.

Maybe Rockstar could make it so some drivers lose control completely, some pull over after a bit, and some stubborn ones keep chasing with worse handling. That variety would keep it from feeling like a cheat code. I just hope they tune it so every pursuit doesn't turn into a shooting gallery.

Source: r/GTA6 · Curated content.

I'd bet the mix idea is close to what they ship, since GTA already had random driver reactions to shots. My question is whether blown tires slow the AI down or just flip them like the trailer showed.

The variety idea is what I'm hoping for too. If some cops keep chasing on a shredded tire with worse handling, the chase stays alive instead of turning into target practice. At higher wanted levels it probably won't matter anyway, they just send more cars than you can shoot. I'll still pop every tire I see though, can't lie.

The swarm point is the right way to frame it. One shot ending a chase only breaks things when three cruisers are the whole pursuit. What actually kills chases in games is certainty, having a move that always works. Keep the results messy and the tension survives. A cop fishtailing on a shredded tire and still coming is way scarier than one who flips.

having a move that always works

ok so this is the whole thing right here, certainty kills tension way faster than any single mechanic does. my theory is rockstar tunes it through wanted levels instead of the tires themselves. popping a tire at two stars feels amazing, at five stars the spawn rate just outpaces your ammo! and gta v already had drivers panic or keep chasing when shot at, no way the AI loses that