Even realism has its limits: Rockstar abandoned one mechanic in GTA VI, considering it too boring

The team is constantly looking for a balance between plausibility and convenience.

In an interview with the Japanese publication Famitsu, Rockstar North head Rob Nelson spoke about one of the mechanics in Grand Theft Auto VI that the team tested during development but ultimately decided to cut.

This refers to a full-fledged system for stocking Jason and Lucia's refrigerator. Players could go to various stores, buy groceries, and bring them home, after which the food would appear in the refrigerator and become available for future use. According to Nelson, the stores even had separate specifications for selling products.

However, Rockstar felt that such a system would make the gameplay unnecessarily complicated.

However, Rockstar is not going to completely abandon realism. In GTA VI, a lot of attention is paid to driving, navigation, and carjacking, but the developers try not to turn realistic mechanics into a routine. According to Nelson, the team is constantly looking for a balance between plausibility and game convenience: character actions should make sense, and not exist solely for role-playing.

Rockstar also pays special attention to the details of the surrounding world. Earlier, Rockstar North co-head Aaron Garbut said that the developers manually worked out the characters that players can meet in Los Santos and other areas of the game world. For individual rooms, the team created entire stories: they took into account who sits where, what characters drink, what traces they leave on tables, and people from the same room could appear in photographs — with their tattoos, relatives, and other individual details.