former rockstar designer says a pet tiger mission was pitched for gta 6

Saw this on Insider Gaming and it's one of those little behind the scenes bits that makes me wish Rockstar would do a proper making-of documentary someday.

The gist is a former designer said pitching missions was encouraged during development, and one of the ideas thrown around involved a pet tiger. That's it. No details on whether it made it anywhere near a script, just that it was pitched.

A pet tiger in Leonida feels almost too on the nose. Vice City is basically Florida, and Florida has a whole history of people owning exotic animals they absolutely should not own. I could see Rockstar taking that and turning it into some side mission where you have to transport a tiger for a sketchy guy in the Keys, or maybe it gets loose in a trailer park. Knowing Rockstar's tone, it probably wouldn't be a cute animal companion thing. It'd be chaos.

What's interesting to me is the part about pitching missions being encouraged. That suggests the mission design team had a lot of freedom to throw weird ideas at the wall. For a game this big, you'd think everything would be locked down early, but apparently not. Makes me wonder how many other wild pitches got cut or morphed into something else entirely.

I'm not gonna pretend this is huge news. It's a tiny anecdote from someone who worked there. But it's the kind of thing that gets me thinking about the tone of the game. GTA has always walked a line between grounded crime drama and absolute absurdity, and a pet tiger mission sits right on that line.

What kind of mission do you think a pet tiger would even be, something serious or full Florida man energy?

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Source: Insider Gaming · Curated content.