rob nelson saying even the devs find new stuff in their own game has me hyped

Caught this in the Famitsu and MikeShowSha interviews and it stuck with me. Rob Nelson was talking about how even he gets surprised by stuff in the game during his own playthroughs. Like seeing a peacock for the first time, or stumbling into an interaction he hadn't seen in months.

This is the director we're talking about. Someone who has played and replayed this thing more times than any of us ever will. And he's still running into new animals, new events, new little moments. That says a lot about how dense the world actually is.

I keep thinking about what that means for the rest of us. If the devs are still discovering things after years of testing, imagine what launch week is gonna feel like. People will be finding weird stuff for months. Maybe years. RDR2 had that vibe with the random encounters and hidden details, but this sounds like it's on another level entirely.

Also the peacock thing is funny to me. Of all the animals to mention, he picks a peacock. Makes me wonder what other wildlife is just wandering around Leonida that nobody's talked about yet.

Anyway, this is the kind of stuff that gets me more excited than any trailer shot. The idea that the world has enough depth that even the people who built it can't keep track of everything.

What's the first thing you're gonna do when you load in, just wander around looking for weird interactions or head straight for a mission?

Source: r/GTA6 · Curated content.

That's the part that sold me too. RDR2 still had random encounters I missed at 100% completion, so a denser world means weeks of wandering before I touch a mission.

First thing I'm doing is stealing the nearest car, finding whatever Leonida's version of Fever 105 is, and just driving! That's how the best discoveries happen anyway, some weird wildlife moment pops off while the perfect track is playing and it becomes a core memory. A peacock crossing the road during a synth needle drop? That's the good stuff!

San Andreas was still hiding stuff from me years later. I didn't see the ghost cars in Back o Beyond until like my fourth playthrough, and that map was tiny compared to what Leonida sounds like. If the guy directing it is still getting jump-scared by a peacock, we're set for a decade of "wait, that was in the game?" posts.