When Rob Nelson, Rockstar Games' head of development at Rockstar North, told the New York Times his own Grand Theft Auto VI run took about 80 hours, it got us curious about how it stacked up against the rest of Rockstar's mainline open-world games line up. So, we did what we always do, and got comparing.
For the released games, we compared player-reported averages from HowLongToBeat. The GTA 6 entry is Nelson’s individual pre-release run, including some optional goals, rather than a confirmed main-story time or a player average. It offers a glimpse of how much more we haven't seen yet, but it is not a like-for-like ranking.
Rockstar's mainline open-world games: reported completion times
Entry | Game | Year | Main story | Main + extras |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Grand Theft Auto VI | 2026 | Not established | About 80 hours — Rob Nelson’s own run, including some optional goals |
2 | Red Dead Redemption 2 | 2018 | 50 to 51 hours | 84 to 89 hours |
3 | Grand Theft Auto V | 2013 | 31 to 32 hours | 51 to 55 hours |
4 | Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas | 2004 | 30 to 31 hours | 45 to 47 hours |
5 | Grand Theft Auto IV | 2008 | 27 to 28 hours | 40 to 41 hours |
6 | Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | 2002 | 17 to 19 hours | 24 to 27 hours |
7 | Red Dead Redemption | 2010 | 17 to 18 hours | 26 to 27 hours |
8 | Grand Theft Auto III | 2001 | 15 to 16 hours | 20 to 22 hours |
Released-game times are player-reported averages from HowLongToBeat.
Beginning with Grand Theft Auto III at around 15 hours in 2001, the mainline Grand Theft Auto titles crept up through Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Grand Theft Auto V, each settling somewhere in the high teens to low 30s for the main story.
Then Red Dead Redemption 2 pushed past 50 hours for the main story and toward 85 with optional content and side missions. Nelson's 80-hour run also included optional goals, so it cannot tell us whether GTA 6 takes longer to finish. It does suggest a substantial adventure, with free-roam activities to explore across Vice City and Leonida.
Also, Nelson works at Rockstar North. He's likely far more familiar with the game's systems than most, so his run is almost certainly different from what a first-timer will spend feeling their way through the game.
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With that said, it's best to treat these numbers as more of a ballpark figure. Player times will swing hard depending on your playstyle and Rockstar designed GTA 6 to factor that in as well, affecting the relationship dynamic between Lucia and Jason.
How much you explore and how many optional activities you tackle will affect your own time. Nelson's figure is one developer's single run reported to the New York Times, not a player average or a confirmed main-story length.
Among the released games in this comparison, Red Dead Redemption 2 asks for the most time, while GTA V's main story sits in the low 30-hour range. Nelson's account gives us a sense of GTA 6's scale, but we will need player completion times to see where it fits alongside them.