rob nelson says rockstar will happily ditch realism if it gets tedious, and he's right

Caught this GamesRadar piece where Rob Nelson was talking about the realism balance in GTA 6. His take was basically that sometimes it's better to just ignore or leave out certain parts of reality. Realism can pull you in, but too much of it starts feeling like a chore.

We've all been there in other games. You're loving the immersion and then suddenly you're stuck doing something that's realistic but completely boring. Rockstar seems to get that line better than most. They'll put insane detail into a diner menu or NPC chatter, but they won't make you sit through a full gas station fill up if it kills the fun.

Nelson's point about omitting reality hits different when you think about how much they've been hyping the world itself. Leonida is massive, the NPCs have their own routines, the weather system looks wild. But none of that matters if the moment to moment gameplay gets bogged down in stuff that's realistic for the sake of being realistic.

I'm genuinely curious what they decided to cut. Like, what realistic stuff did they build and then go "nah, this is annoying, scrap it"? Could be anything from eating animations to phone battery management to who knows what.

What do you think they cut for the sake of fun, and is there anything you're hoping they kept even if it's tedious?

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Source: GamesRadar+ · Curated content.