rockstar considered four protagonists for gta 6, worried about diluting player time

Saw this on PC Gamer and it's wild to think about. Rockstar apparently kicked around the idea of four protagonists for GTA 6 before settling on Lucia and Jason. The article quotes someone from the studio asking,

"How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now?"

That's a real question after GTA 5. Three protagonists worked because each one had a distinct personality and a chunk of the map that felt like theirs. But four? I can see why they backed off. The worry was diluting the amount of player time with each character. You'd end up with four half-baked arcs instead of two solid ones.

I'm honestly glad they went with two. GTA 5's trio was great but Michael and Franklin carried most of the emotional weight while Trevor was the chaos button. Four would have been a mess. Lucia and Jason being a couple already gives them a built-in dynamic that three or four separate characters wouldn't have. Plus the Bonnie and Clyde angle is way more interesting than juggling four strangers.

Still, it's fun to imagine what a four protagonist GTA 6 would look like. Maybe a cop, a cartel member, a street racer, and a corrupt politician? But then you'd need four safehouses, four phone contacts, four sets of missions. The pacing would suffer. Rockstar made the right call.

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Source: PC Gamer · Curated content.