A Hitman developer says GTA 6's NPCs are ten years ahead of the industry
Praise from a studio that has spent twenty years building games where the only thing that matters is how strangers behave.
A developer at IO Interactive has publicly described Grand Theft Auto 6's non-player character systems as at least a decade ahead of the rest of the industry, based purely on the public footage.
Why the source matters
Developers praise each other's games constantly and most of it is professional courtesy. This one carries more weight because of who is saying it.
IO Interactive makes Hitman. The entire Hitman design rests on crowd simulation and NPC behaviour: routines that repeat believably, characters who notice things, disguise systems that only work because strangers evaluate what they are looking at, and levels that are essentially clockwork machines made of people.
No studio has spent more of the last twenty years thinking specifically about how background characters should behave. When somebody from that team says a rival's crowd work is a decade ahead, they are speaking about the one thing they are best placed to judge.
What it lines up with
It sits directly alongside Rockstar's own account of the work: over 600,000 animations and a Los Angeles team of writers, directors and producers built solely to realise non-player characters.
It also matters mechanically rather than only atmospherically. The wanted system is reported to use witness descriptions as evidence against you, and a witness system is only as good as the simulation of the people doing the witnessing.
The caveat
This is one developer's read of a trailer, offered in public and not on behalf of their employer. It is informed opinion about marketing footage, not a technical teardown, and trailers are assembled to look their best.
It is worth noting because of who said it. It is not evidence.
Sources
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