Former Rockstar Dev Expects GTA 6 to Borrow Heavily From Red Dead Redemption 2

Rob Carr keeps talking, and he keeps saying things worth listening to.

The former Rockstar Games audio designer, who worked on Grand Theft Auto V, L.A. Noire, Red Dead Redemption, and Red Dead Redemption 2, has given one of the most insightful interviews in recent memory on the KiwiTalkz YouTube channel. We have already covered his comments on Rockstar's "go nuts" scale-down philosophy and his belief that the RAGE engine was likely rebuilt from scratch for Grand Theft Auto 6.

Now, in the same conversation, Carr made another prediction on how GTA 6 will borrow heavily from Red Dead Redemption 2, which makes a lot of sense.

Rockstar does not build its games in isolation. Each new title inherits ideas, systems, and mechanics from the studio's previous work, often in ways that are not immediately obvious because the setting has changed so dramatically. A Western and a crime game set in the modern-day Miami-inspired Vice City might seem like they have nothing in common.

Carr explained this with a concrete example.

GTA V borrowed the Dead Eye system from the original Red Dead Redemption. In the Red Dead games, Dead Eye is a slow-motion targeting mechanic that lets you mark multiple enemies and execute them in a single burst.

When Rockstar built GTA V, they adapted it into three distinct special abilities for the game's three protagonists. Michael got a slow-motion shooting mode that functioned like Dead Eye, Franklin got a slow-motion driving mode that let him navigate traffic at high speed, and Trevor got a berserker mode that reduced incoming damage and increased outgoing damage.

All three abilities were variations on the same underlying principle of giving players the ability to temporarily slow or alter the flow of gameplay to give the player an advantage, but Rockstar had tailored each to the character's personality and gameplay role.

He did not specify which RDR2 systems he expects to see adapted in Leonida, but we have a couple of ideas in mind.

The most obvious candidate is the world simulation. RDR2 built a living ecosystem where NPCs had daily routines, wildlife behaved dynamically, weather affected gameplay, and the passage of time felt tangible. Towns came alive at dawn and quieted at night, with shopkeepers opening and closing, strangers you helped or antagonized remembering you, and the world felt like it existed independently of you, and that you were just as much a part of it as everyone else was.

Applying that same philosophy to a modern city, where pedestrians commute, traffic patterns change with time of day, neighborhoods feel distinct depending on the time of day, and your reputation precedes you, would make GTA 6 feel the most alive that a Grand Theft Auto game will ever have.

The NPC interaction system is another strong candidate. In RDR2, you could approach almost any character in the world and choose to greet them, antagonize them, or simply observe them. GTA V had nothing comparable. Its NPCs were reactive in a basic sense, running from gunfire, calling the police, and occasionally shouting at you, but they were not conversational.

Then there are the smaller systems that added layers of texture and immersion to RDR2 and could translate to GTA 6 in transformed ways. Arthur Morgan's journal, which recorded his observations and sketches as the story progressed, could become an in-game social media feed or phone gallery in a modern setting. The horse bonding system, where your relationship with your horse improves over time and affects performance, could translate to vehicle customization and familiarity, where a car you have driven consistently handles better than one you just stole. The camp system, where the Dutch Van Der Linde gang had a home base that evolved and deteriorated as the story progressed, could translate to a safehouse or crew headquarters that reflects the player's progress and choices.

The environmental storytelling is perhaps the most important inheritance. RDR2's world was dense with stories that nobody told you to find. Abandoned homesteads with journals that explained what happened with environmental details that rewarded observation rather than waypoint-chasing.

RDR2 pushed world simulation and NPC behavior further than any game had before and GTA 6 will continue what started when Grand Theft Auto III established the open-world crime genre in the earliy 2000s with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City adding personality and atmospehere, and finally, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas building on this with its scope and RPG elements and Grand Theft Auto IV adding physics and emotional weight.

GTA 6, launching on November 19, 2026, is the first Rockstar game to follow RDR2. It is the first game built on what is likely a rebuilt RAGE engine with a $3 billion budget and seven years of development behind it. If every previous Rockstar game inherited the best ideas from the game before it, then GTA 6 is inheriting from the most ambitious open-world game ever made.

Based on this, Carr's prediction is far from outlandish. Instead, it is the natural conclusion of a development philosophy that Rockstar has followed for over two decades.

The question now then becomes now whether GTA 6 borrows from RDR2. The question is how much, and how well those Western-era systems translate to a modern-day Vice City that was built to be the most detailed open world Rockstar has ever created.

If the answer is "very well," then the seven years since RDR2 will have been spent combining everything Rockstar has learned across two franchises into a single product.

That is what $3 billion and seven years should buy and what players will get on November 19.