I’m always a fan of when Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick gets all contemplative and philosophical about Grand Theft Auto 6. It’s not entirely unearned, mind.
As I pointed out when the second trailer dropped, Rockstar’s pushing the envelope hard enough to send me into an existential crisis with priority shipping. Still, this will be a game about doing crime and stealing cars, and also maybe about a really hot power couple. I don’t know if it’s going up in the Louvre.
Despite that, Zelnick’s gotten all effusive about pursuing some sort of grand theft singularity again. Speaking with IGN, he reveals that the delay was to ensure Rockstar had time to pursue, you guessed it, perfection.
“As we get closer to completion of a title that’s seeking perfection, the needs or lack thereof, for continued polish become clear,” Zelnick explains. “In this case there was an opportunity with a small amount of incremental time, we thought, to make sure Rockstar Games achieves its creative vision with no limitations. And I supported (of course) that approach.”
It’s all executive speak, mind, but it’s clear Zelnick will brook no less than the platonic ideal of a videogame. The absolute distillation of game-ness into its purest form. We must become one with the Grand Theft Auto, and think of nothing else until its pristine aura has passed through our system like the breath of a sleeping god.
I’m being pretty glib, here, but it’s clear Rockstar’s whole identity has gone from ‘let’s make some pretty good open world games’ to ‘if we aren’t completely upturning graphical expectations, what are we doing here’. Don’t just take my word for it, Zelnick’s literally said the team’s seeking perfection from the get-go, back in February of last year.
In fact, it’s a drum he’s hammered constantly since. Back in May of this year, Zelnick also said that “perfection is indeed hard to measure”. He also said that he was confident GTA 6 would make its release window, so maybe they figured out how to measure perfection in the interim.
Regardless, Zelnick says the delay pains him: “While of course, delays pain me—how could they not?—the most important thing to do is to support your teams in their search for perfection.” There’s that word again. Zelnick, mate, might I suggest a thesaurus. Flawlessness and sublimity are right there, and if you keep harping on about perfection I’m going to get worried. Given how gorgeous GTA 6 looks, though, it’s paying off.
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