GTA 6's animations have improved, says original GTA programmer: "things are moving much better"
OG DMA Design guy comments on second trailer
One of the programmers behind the very first Grand Theft Auto has praised Rockstar for delaying GTA 6's initial release to May next year, observing (not in so many words) that the developers could have rushed out an early release consisting of a city's worth of T-posing NPCs and whitebox freeways, and people would still have paid top dollar for the game.
Posting on social media, DMA Design founder (and former Lemmings developer) Mike Dailly also suggested that the Miami-based open world game's latest trailer is a bump in animation quality over the announcement video from 2023. I know, I know: video game looks better as it gets closer to release - more at eleven. Still, I have a certain amount of nerdy interest in how, exactly, GTA 6's animations may have come along.
Let's rattle through those trailers again. Here's the one from 2023.
Dailly had this to say on Xitter of the announcement trailer. "Looks pretty, but the animations...bloody hell guys. Can't you animate things properly? No one moves like that!" Ooft, paging the burn ward! Flash forward to this month, and Dailly's open-ended concerns appear to have been addressed by the second trailer, below.
"Now that's more like it," Dailly wrote on Bluesky yesterday. "That environment is lovely, and things are moving much better... Even if they'd released it broken, it'd still have sold hugely. So it's even more impressive they took the decision to delay it."
I am not a computer wizard equipped to conjure sweaty screenfuls of buttock from the sexless insides of a PS5 using the power of maths, but I'll be honest, I don't see an enormous gulf between trailers, beyond the differing presentation and music choice.
Well, I think the bit in the first one where Lucia waves her arms around while standing up in the roofless car looks a bit... impressionistic, like she's trying to conduct an invisible orchestra. But come now, Mike, I don't think it's fair to body-shame an ex-con fresh out of jail because she looks a bit unsteady while sticking her arms out of a moving vehicle. She's trying to blow off some steam, Mike! Besides, perhaps there is an invisible orchestra in the game.
Here are some other arbitrary micro-comparisons: Trailer 1 has flappier bottoms. Trailer 2 has more impetuous playful shoving. Trailer 1 has more heartfelt soul brother handshakes. Trailer 2 has... no crocodiles. Perhaps that crocodile walk cycle can serve as a critical yardstick once GTA 6 releases on console next year (PC release date, as ever, to follow). In the meantime, I welcome your mealy-minded feats of frame analysis.