Why a Rockstar Boss Spent 2 Hours Not Doing His Mission
Independent fan coverage and commentary — this site is not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.
Independent fan coverage and commentary. This site is not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive. If Rockstar says something different from what is here, its word counts, not ours. Cover image: Rockstar Games.
Everyone has opened a GTA with one small errand in mind and looked up hours later with a stolen car, a wanted level and no memory of the errand. It turns out at least one of the people building GTA 6 did the same thing, and he did it while testing the game. By IBTimes’ account, the detour ran through a low health bar and an NPC who insulted him on the way to a store.
According to Bloomberg’s October 14 feature on the making of GTA 6, by Jason Schreier, which draws on interviews with Rockstar staff, Phil Hooker, one of Rockstar’s three heads of development per GTA Intel, was playing an internal build of the game and heading for a story mission. About two hours later he had still not arrived. Official, for context: GTA 6 launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
The Detour, as Reported
We could not read Bloomberg past its paywall, so this comes from IBTimes, GameOverDrive and GTA Intel, which retell it. Late in development, say IBTimes and GTA Intel, a minor car crash became an argument with the other driver. Low on health, he went looking for a store with healing items, an NPC insulted him on the way, and a fight followed. Each retelling stresses different details, so we keep what they share.
He robbed the store, with nobody at the register, outran the police, found an expensive car and went to sell it. A car blasting loud music nearly hit him, IBTimes and GameOverDrive add, so he followed it to a property, sold the loot to a fence and got a new lead. The retellings describe it as unscripted, and GameOverDrive calls it emergent gameplay, like Leonida’s reported weather and wildlife.
Why This Feels So Familiar
Most of us have our own version. You start the game to do one mission, swerve around a car, and the evening disappears into a chase nobody planned. The mission sits on the map, patient and slightly ignored. Hearing that someone who helps build the game got lost the same way is oddly comforting, because it suggests the detour was never a flaw in how we play. Nobody was wrong to follow the loud car.
The mission was only ever an excuse to get into the car.
That is why the story works as an invitation. Rockstar has not shown us a session like this, and we have not seen the build, so we cannot say how often the finished game will do it. IBTimes says Hooker recalled the sheer fun of the session and the whole team left the review buoyed. GTA Intel says it left them convinced that, if they held their nerve, they had something special. Fun is not a promise.
What Is Official, Reported and Still Unknown
Official: the launch date and platforms above, from Rockstar’s own site. Reported: the whole anecdote, one internal session, retold through a Bloomberg feature that we read only secondhand. Unknown: whether a normal player will hit a chain like this, and GameOverDrive notes the account does not prove every driver will react this way or every store can be robbed. Rumor: none, and we are not adding one for the sake of a section.
So we will not promise that GTA 6 will swallow your Saturday. We will say the signs are good that it will let you try, and that the people at Rockstar who saw that session seemed to enjoy it. Think of it as a good sign, not a guarantee. Until November 19 the mission just waits on the map, and when the game opens, running late on purpose may be the most honest way to start.
Read next: The GTA 6 Launch Week Is Already Messing With Work, GTA 6’s Last Month of Waiting: How We’re Getting Through It and Is Vice City Leaking Into the Real World?
What was the last errand in a GTA game that you never finished, and what got in the way?
