The big leak about GTA 6 was received very negatively by a part of the gaming community and criticized for its poor appearance. Consequently, developers from indie and AAA games released videos showcasing their games in early development stages.
That being said: A few days ago, there was the largest leak at developer Rockstar Games that the company has ever experienced. It contained an extreme amount of material from the development of GTA 6, the next big flagship game from Rockstar.
Among them were also screenshots and gameplay videos that had spread rapidly on the Internet. However, it was a very early version of the game that is still completely unfinished and looks accordingly.
Nevertheless, voices in the gaming community quickly surfaced claiming that the graphics of GTA 6 are obviously bad. Especially a tweet on the subject was shared a lot, went viral quickly, and also received a lot of attention from developers of various studios.
In it, the Twitter user @Design4Mind317 claimed that graphics and lighting in games are completed first. Accordingly, GTA 6 has been in development for 4 years, and the final product would look just like the images and videos from the leak.
“Assets from Killzone were used because games in development don’t look finished”
This is what developers and journalists are saying: The viral post from @Design4Mind317 triggered a wave of reactions, criticizing him and those who agreed with him for their lack of knowledge. A whole group of developers who have worked on games like God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Sea of Thieves, and Cult of the Lamb opposed this.
The core message of their posts was that graphics are definitely not the first thing to be completed, and a playable build of a game does not mean that it is finished. Many of them therefore shared videos of the early builds of their own games in which:
- Lighting is missing or is only extremely simple
- Assets from other games were used as substitutes
- The environment contains no details (no grass, buildings look like blocks)
- Game characters are just gray dolls or consist of bright blocks, etc.
Here are some of the videos and screenshots that were shared in this context:
The screenshot in the tweet shows the dreaded Thunderjaw from Horizon as a colorful, blocky toy dino, whose breakable body parts are color-coded. He is shot from a weapon that the studio Guerrilla Games borrowed from Killzone, one of their earlier games.
In another tweet, one of the most spectacular fight scenes in God of War is shown. In it, Kratos and Atreus fight against the god Baldur, but during development, everything looked very gray and colorless.
Another tweet shows a comparison of an early build of Cult of the Lamb on the left side and the finished version on the right. The early build version lacks many assets and animations, and the textures are heavily simplified.
The message of all these videos is that one cannot judge a game based on leaks like GTA 6. They show the UI of the developer tools, partly use incorrect assets to test certain things, lack many features, etc.
Most gamers cannot relate to this because they are not familiar with the processes within game development and misinterpret what they see significantly.
In their tweets, the developers comment that their games often look “unfinished” even less than a year before the end of development. A leaked build, like that of GTA 6 showing a pre-alpha phase, is therefore far from being graphically finished.
What do you think of the comparisons between the development versions of major AAA games? What is your opinion on the leak of GTA 6? Tell us in the comments.
