From RenderWare to RAGE: How Rockstar’s Open-World Tech Got From GTA III to RDR2 to GTA 6

Rockstar has never published a spec sheet for GTA 6’s engine, or even named it. What it has said is that Trailer 2 was captured entirely in-game on a PlayStation 5, and that the game “continues our efforts to push the limits of what’s possible.”

To see what that means, follow the line from GTA III’s borrowed engine to RDR2’s light and GTA 6’s crowds.

The RenderWare Years

RAGE’s first game wasn’t GTA. It was Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, released for Xbox 360 on May 23, 2006. A ping-pong game was a small, controlled place to prove the engine before a city.

GTA IV and the Euphoria Moment

In February 2007, Rockstar and NaturalMotion announced a partnership, and in June Rockstar confirmed that NaturalMotion’s Euphoria tech was in GTA IV, “demonstrating real time footage of the game in action using the technology” in a trailer, MCV reported. Euphoria drives character animation on the fly instead of replaying canned falls. Rockstar described RAGE then as “allowing for an unprecedented level of realism and interactivity” (Reported, MCV).

That stumble-and-grab feel, people reacting to a car door or a shove like bodies rather than mannequins, has been Rockstar’s signature ever since.

GTA V: Squeezing Old Consoles

The PS4 and Xbox One versions taught the studio what the newer hardware could do. RDR2 graphics technical director Alex Hadjadj told VG247 that “by starting with a game designed for last gen, and pushing it as far as we could, we got a better idea of what was achievable,” pointing the team toward “a global lighting solution, atmospheric effects, or post processing” (Reported, via DualShockers).

Phil Hooker explained why those upgrades never went back into GTA V: it was “such a complex mixture of animation, AI, and dialogue that we couldn’t unravel it without fear of breaking such a complex game.”

RDR2: Light, Clouds and People

RDR2 was the real jump. Digital Foundry called it Rockstar’s “first full foray into physically-based rendering,” which simulates how light hits surfaces based on roughness and reflectivity. It added volumetric clouds, contact-hardening shadows and pre-calculated global illumination, and ran at native 4K on Xbox One X (Reported, Digital Foundry).

The people changed too. “For GTA, we needed a crowd to walk the streets,” director of engineering Klaas Schilstra told VG247. “For RDR, we had to have a populated town of recognizable individuals, and each character in that town needs to… be believable.” Our GTA 6 vs RDR2 guide compares the two side by side.

The Bridge: GTA V Enhanced

Rockstar kept testing new tricks on its old game. The 2022 PS5 and Xbox Series X|S version of GTA V added ray-traced reflections and shadows. That’s the lighting tech analysts now see across GTA 6’s trailers. Rockstar’s own video for the March 2025 GTA V Enhanced PC update is at the bottom of this page.

What GTA 6 Adds

Digital Foundry’s reads of Trailer 2 count about 1440p internal resolution, upscaled, at 30 fps, and argue ray-traced lighting looks integral to the art, so a 60 fps mode on base consoles looks unlikely (Estimate). Nelson said in August that the game targets 30 fps on consoles, with 60 fps undecided (Reported). Our 30 fps longread has the full picture.

The density is the headline. Rockstar told The New York Times the game has “well over 600,000” animations, against about 300,000 in RDR2 (Reported). Aaron Garbut, Rockstar North co-studio head, told Game Informer Leonida is about twice the size of GTA V’s map and that “everything is dialed up – detail, scope, breadth, scale, interaction and density.” Nelson told IGN that current-gen memory lets animations retarget to more body types.

The world reacts more, too. Owen Shepherd, VP of art for lighting and rendering, told Game Informer the team “re-engineered our weather system to make everything much more localized and persistent,” up to tropical storms and hurricanes. Game Informer counts over 170 animal species, with new fur, feather and bioluminescence rendering (Reported). See our weather guide.

Patents, AI and What’s Still Unknown

In 2023, Eurogamer reported on a Take-Two patent, “System and Method for Virtual Character Locomotion,” by a former Rockstar engineer, which builds movement from small blocks so characters can walk differently in rain, when tired or hurt (Reported; Rockstar hasn’t said it’s in GTA 6). Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two’s CEO, called the idea of pushing a button to “generate a hit” “a laughable notion” (Reported, The Game Business via Push Square).

Still not published: an engine version, resolution and performance modes, the PS5 Pro differences, the Series S targets, and any PC specs (Not announced). Our Extended Look guide covers the latest footage.

Related: GTA 6 on Xbox Series S