From Camera Tricks to an LA NPC Team: How GTA’s Crowds Grew Up

Rockstar built an entirely new team of writers, directors and producers in Los Angeles just to make GTA 6’s pedestrians talk, Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson told IGN. The game’s NPCs notice when you eavesdrop, react to how you treat them, and come in more body types than any GTA before.

That’s a long way from 2001, when GTA III’s crowds were mostly a camera trick. Here’s how Rockstar got there.

GTA III: A City That Exists Where You Look

The PS2 trilogy faked its busy streets. Obbe Vermeij, a former Rockstar North technical director, explained the trick on X in 2024: “As the player moves around, cars are constantly created and deleted to give the appearance of a busy city. ” In GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas, his code placed cars about 70 meters from the player when they’d be in view of the camera and removed them at around 90 (Reported, via Meristation). Cars off camera appeared much closer, at around 15 meters. He admitted it sometimes produced “empty or unusually busy streets.”

GTA IV and V: Physics, Then Personalities

GTA IV in 2008 gave pedestrians Euphoria physics, which generates movement at runtime rather than playing canned animations. That’s why people stumble, brace and fall differently every time you clip them.

GTA V filled Los Santos and Blaine County with different kinds of locals. You could bump into them and hear them react, but there wasn’t much of a conversation.

Red Dead Redemption 2 Changed the Rules

Nelson credits RDR2 as the turning point. “In RDR1 and GTA 5 there were basic systems for interacting, but the interactions were very simple,” he told IGN. In RDR2, holding the left trigger with your gun holstered let you greet or antagonize anyone instead of aiming at them (Reported).

“This NPC interaction system is one that is returning and evolved from Red Dead Redemption 2,” he said. “While we pushed interaction with NPCs as far as we could for Red Dead Redemption 2, with this game we are taking it much further.”

The LA Team and Eavesdropping

To make crowds sound real, Nelson said, everyone on the team had to “become students of human behavior,” studying “the rise and fall of a conversation as you pass two people.” That’s where the LA team came in, writing what he called “the depth and breadth and variety of crazy people saying crazy things that we needed” (Reported).

Listen too long and they notice. “If you stand there and try to listen to the whole thing, they’ll often turn around, notice you and go, ‘Oh hey, can I help you?’” Nelson said. Follow someone too closely and “they may be aggressive, or they may just want to get away from you.”

Every Height, Every Shape

Older games had a hidden constraint: body types shared animation sets. “If you had the same animation on the 5’6” person and the 6’2” person, they wouldn’t line up if they’re fighting or sitting in cars,” Nelson told IGN. For GTA 6, “the team worked out a system where they now retarget those animations on the fly,” which allows “a huge variety of heights and shapes” (Reported).

A 2019 Take-Two patent filing, reported by IGN in 2021, described Rockstar tech that gives each AI driver its own acceleration, braking, top speed and cornering limits. The filing didn’t name a game (Reported).

The World Pushes Back

“In previous games you’re quite overpowered in the world compared to everyone else apart from the cops,” Nelson said. In GTA 6, other people “have impulses of their own and act upon you,” and some carry weapons. Your behavior feeds a Criminal Profile, which is “different than the honor system in Red Dead Redemption 2”: consistent, unnecessary violence shifts “how the world reacts to you and how the narrative plays out” (Reported). Our NPC interactions guide lists every detail.

What We Don’t Know

• How many pedestrians are on screen. Rockstar hasn’t given a number.
• Whether crowd density differs between PS5, PS5 Pro and Xbox Series S.
• How much of the LA team’s dialogue is unique per district.

Official Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2, with Vice City’s crowds in full view.