One of the latest Take-Two patents hints that developers Rockstar aim to bring more realistic and immersive character movement animations to GTA 6 using a brand-new locomotion system and method.
On Oct. 29, a Reddit user shared a patent they discovered on the LinkedIn profile of Tobias Kleanthous, former Lead AI/Gameplay Programmer at Rockstar Games, that describes a “clever system” for character movements and animations.
The author of the post highlighted that the system is a “library of small building blocks for character movements,” and those blocks can then be combined to create a “wide range of animations,” instead of having a full character animation for every possible scenario. This makes players believe GTA 6 will have more immersive animations and characters moving “in ways that match the weather, their energy level, and their injuries.”
According to the OP, the system will apply not only to playable characters but also to NPCs. They described a leak where they saw a police officer “gradually change his cover and height based on the height of the wall/fence in front of him” making NPCs more challenging, but in a good way.
While the exact leak the author mentioned appears to have been removed, the OP claims the gameplay leak showed a shootout between Lucia, the long-rumored female playable protagonist of the game, and the police, where you could see officers actively changing cover after taking a few shots at the player, indicating that NPCs will act smarter than before.
Tobias Kleanthous, who is listed as one of the inventors for the patent, previously worked on Red Dead Redemption 2 to bring “horses, animals, tragically flawed outlaws, cowboys and other folk to life.”
The world and animations in RDR2 were some of the most immersive ones I’ve ever seen in games. The animations in particular were smooth, realistic, and interacted beautifully with the game’s environment. All that and something even better likely awaits us in the highly anticipated GTA 6.
