Players complain about the look of GTA 6 – Then developer colleagues show what game development really looks like
The big leak of GTA 6 was received very negatively by part of the gaming community and criticized for its lousy appearance. In response, indie and AAA game developers have released videos showing their games in the early stages of development.
That was said: A few days ago, developer Rockstar Games had the biggest leak the company has ever experienced. It was extremely rich in material from the development of GTA 6, Rockstar’s next big flagship game.
These included screenshots and gameplay videos that had spread across the internet at breakneck speed. However, it was a very early version of the game, which is still completely unfinished and also looks accordingly.
Nevertheless, voices in the gaming community quickly became loud that the graphics of GTA 6 are obviously bad. One tweet on the subject in particular was widely shared, quickly went viral and also received a lot of attention from developers at various studios.
In it, Twitter user @Design4Mind317 claimed that graphics and lighting in games are the first things to be completed. According to this, GTA 6 has been in development for 4 years and the finished product would look exactly like the pictures and videos from the leak.
“Killzone assets were used because games in development don’t look finished”
This is what the developers and journalists say: @Design4Mind317’s viral post sparked a wave of reactions, criticizing him and those who agreed with him for their lack of knowledge. A whole host of developers who worked on games like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Sea of Thieves, and Cult of the Lamb opposed this.
The gist of their posts was that graphics are definitely not the first thing to be completed and a playable build of a game doesn’t mean it’s finished. Many of them therefore showed videos with the early builds of their own games, in which:
- The lighting is missing or extremely simple
- The assets from other games were used as spare parts
- Environment lacks any detail (no grass, buildings look like blocks)
- The characters are just gray dolls or are made of bright blocks, etc.
Here are some of the videos and screenshots shared in the context:
The screenshot in the tweet shows the dreaded Thunderjaw from Horizon as a colorful, chunky toy dinosaur with breakaway body parts color-coded. He’s being shot at with a gun that studio Guerrilla Games borrowed from Killzone, one of their earlier games.
Another tweet features one of the most bombastic battle scenes in God of War. In it Kratos and Atreus fight against the god Baldur, but during development the whole thing looked very gray and colorless.
Another tweet compares an early build of Cult of the Lamb on the left and the finished version on the right. The early build version is massively missing assets and animations, and the textures are heavily simplified.
The message of all these videos is that you can’t judge a game by leaks like GTA 6. They show the UI of the developer tools, sometimes use the wrong assets to test certain things, many features are missing, etc.
Most gamers are unfamiliar with the game development process and grossly misinterpret what they see.
In their tweets, the developers comment that some of their games still look “unfinished” less than a year before the end of development. A leaked build that, like GTA 6, shows a pre-alpha phase is graphically far from finished.
How do you like the comparisons between the development versions of the big AAA games? What is your opinion on the GTA 6 leak? Tell us in the comments.
The mega leak harms GTA 6 and Rockstar, but also the fans
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