GTA 6: 10 Things Fans Most Want To See

9. A Smaller, Focused Open-World

GTA V's world is an achievement in game design, no doubt, but can you honestly say it made as much of an impression on you as that of Vice City or San Andreas?

We're getting to a point now where sizeable game worlds are just a given, but there's a defined cutoff between scale and quality. Bigger isn't always better (just look at No Man's Sky), and as GTA IV's version of Liberty City ends up feeling like a giant brown n' grey smush whenever you think back on its similar-looking streets, we need a game world that reigns in sheer size for a higher level of density and memorability.

I'd go so far as to say that chasing semi-realistic layouts of cities doesn't make for good game design. GTA's cities work best when they're essentially a 'greatest hits' of a given place - somewhere stuffed with the most memorable landmarks and iconic parts of a location, all far closer together than in real life.

In GTA's III through San Andreas, we were constantly dovetailing off from police chases to discover hidden stunt ramps that provided the perfect slow-motion getaway moments. There was an element of pure 'fun' to these places that was lost as the series' scope and scale got emphasised, and it needs to come back.