Grand Theft Auto 6 will use new locomotive technology for “highly dynamic and realistic animations” when the player interacts with the world, according to a patent filed earlier in 2023.
Reddit user Tobbelobben30 took another look at the leaked information about Grand Theft Auto 6 and homed in on the name “Tobias Kleanthous”. According to their LinkedIn profile, Kleanthous was an employee of Rockstar Games between 2014 and 2021.
As a lead artificial intelligence and gameplay programmer, he “[worked] to bring horses, animals, tragically flawed outlaws, cowboys and other folk to life”.
That would therefore pertain to Red Dead Redemption 2, however, Rockstar Games said that work on Grand Theft Auto 6 was “well underway” in February 2022.
Patents take approximately one to three years to be approved in the United States, and the patent was issued in April 2023. In Kleanthous’ own words, the “system and method for virtual character locomotion” was introduced to more than one game at Rockstar Games.
Tobbelobben30 then theorised that this has been added to Grand Theft Auto 6, implementing a “library of small building blocks for character movements” that inform the “highly dynamic and realistic” way that the character should react to their environment and status.
“For instance, think about a character in the game walking in the rain, feeling tired, or getting injured. Instead of designing separate animations for each of these situations, they use these building blocks to put together the character’s movements naturally,” they elaborated.
They continued to explain that this also applies to non-playable characters (NPCs), like police officers, who would change how close to the ground they are dependent on the cover in front of them.
The effect is that NPCS seem smarter and the player is more immersed in the world of Grand Theft Auto 6 when seeing how the characters respond to other factors.
Rockstar Games said it would not show off anything about the upcoming game until it was ready to. As such, at this point in time, it is not confirmed whether or not the animations in Grand Theft Auto 6 are using Kleanthous’ patent.
In other gaming news, Crytek shared that a single-player Hunt: Showdown campaign has been considered by the team: “we’ve discussed what it would be like, we’ve started a little bit more world-building”.