Focus
Time slows and hit zones light up, red for lethal and yellow for limbs. Grand Theft Auto finally gets its Dead Eye.
Focus slows time and paints hit zones onto whoever you are pointing at, red for the shots that kill and yellow for limbs. Anyone who has played Red Dead Redemption will recognise the shape of it immediately.
The interesting part is the yellow
A slow motion aim assist is not new. Marking limbs separately is, at least for this series, because it makes disarming a deliberate option rather than an accident of bad aim. Grand Theft Auto has never given you a reliable way to end an encounter without killing everyone in it. Red Dead Redemption 2 did, through a mix of disarming shots, intimidation and defusing, and it changed how many of its encounters felt.
Put that next to a police system that builds a case against you out of evidence and a profile that records how you operate, and a non-lethal option stops being a curiosity. A robbery where nobody was shot is a different problem for the police than one where somebody was.
Where it sits in the series
Rockstar has moved mechanics between its two flagship series in both directions for years. GTA V's three-protagonist special abilities were closer to a stat buff than to Dead Eye. Focus reads like the Red Dead system arriving properly, adapted for modern weapons and a game where the person you are shooting at may well be shooting back with something automatic.
What is not known
How Focus is charged, whether it is per character, whether it can be upgraded, and how long it lasts have not been shown. Nor has Rockstar said whether disarming has mechanical consequences beyond the obvious one of leaving somebody alive.