GTA 6’s Main Story Took a Rockstar Dev 80 Hours To Beat

Grand Theft Auto 6 fans, I hope you’ve cleared a good chunk of time on your calendar. Thursday’s big GTA 6 information dump has confirmed that Rockstar’s open-world game is an experience that will keep people busy for a long, long time.

Speaking to the New York Times, Rockstar North’s co-studio head, Rob Nelson, shared a small aside that’s got GTA 6 fans freaking out because of its implications. Nelson said he played through the entirety of the game in February, and despite mostly sticking to the main quest line, it still took him 80 hours to beat it. Mind you, this is someone who has worked on the game and is already very familiar with it. Average players who are jumping in for the first time will probably need much more time than that to beat GTA 6.

Nelson did add the caveat that he included “some optional goals” during that playtime, most of which had some sort of narrative ramification for the game at large. Yet based on everything Rockstar revealed in the Netflix extended look, GTA 6 borders on a life sim. You eat and drink, and stay active by playing tennis or lifting weights at the gym. You can pass the time playing pool, or take in the sights kayaking. You can muddy up with some dirt bikes, or catch some air while skydiving. Heck, you could probably spend ages just standing in one place, listening to what the NPCs have to say.

This list is hardly exhaustive, and some of these activities were already possible in Grand Theft Auto 5. But when you know that GTA 6′s map is three times bigger than what was playable in Red Dead Redemption 2, it’s hard not to feel a mixture of awe and dread. RDR2, for context, is a game that can take around 60 hours to beat without any distractions.

Rockstar’s aim to make another forever game is evident throughout the NYT’s write-up. While every single interaction that’s possible in real life isn’t present in GTA 6, Nelson says there’s enough in there to allow for some pretty deep role-play. The preview also repeats the idea that Rockstar wants the game to stay culturally relevant for at least a decade. There’s even a Todd Howard-esque “See that mountain” quote from Nelson in the preview.

“You can see these vehicles from the top of a skyscraper and then parachute down and see that it’s the actual vehicle you saw there,” Nelson said. “All these things cascade all the way down.”