9 Ways Rockstar Could Easily Ruin GTA VI

1. A Piecemeal Story & A Rushed Ending

Crafting a story that fits the open-world template - and therefore, both individual missions and vastly experimental, aimless exploration - is one hell of a tough ask. Even in The Witcher 3 you could ponder why Geralt was off adventuring when he was supposed to be tracking down Ciri, and although its more linear overall, Mass Effect 3 suffered immensely by framing your earth-saving exploits as time-sensitive, only to then let you indulge in a good 50 side missions.

For GTA V, Rockstar stepped away from the overarching narrative of IV, and instead posited many of the missions as individual set-pieces (such as the LifeInvader one, or any of the heists). This gets away from the need to have pace or thematic elements carry from one to the next, but it also meant that come the final mission, it felt like someone just slapped a full stop on a conversation that was still in full flow.

Suddenly Franklin was being asked to choose which of his 'friends' to kill from a phone screen, as every major player in the story was swept up in one motion, executing characters that were thought to be untouchable, simply because they could suddenly be tracked through GPS data.

GTA VI needs a proper story; something that lets us indulge in various strands of characterisation/side missions, whilst having a throughline that pays off at the end. Red Dead proved this is possible by having the family life aspect of Marston's story bookend the entire journey, and it's a structure GTA would benefit from; a criminal getting dragged further and further into a life of crime, going on one hell of an arc and coming back out the other side.

How do you think Rockstar will tackle GTA VI? Let us know in the comments!