Grand Theft Auto 6 is overhauling the Wanted and police response systems in an interesting way. If you’ve played Grand Theft Auto games before, you’ll know that if you do something illegal, the police will show up. You’ll get a wanted level represented by stars–the more stars you have, the more aggressive the police, or even the military, will be.
In order to get out of the situation, you evade the police. You’ll see them on the map, so it’s easy to lay low for a minute and get them off your back. That is not the case in GTA 6. In the extended gameplay trailer, we did get a look at how some of this works, but more details have surfaced through some exclusive coverage.
The first thing we noticed was the return of the six-star wanted level. This was missing in GTA 5, but in older games if you got six stars it would call in the military. Looking at the return of the six stars, it could happen that the military could also get involved.
In GTA 6, instead of the police searching your specific area for a short time, they’ll cast a much wider net. That means that wherever you go in Leonida, the police will be on alert and looking for you.
There’s far more than just the star system in GTA 6. Some of the icons underneath the stars tell a story, too. These symbols tell you exactly what the police are looking for when you commit a crime. An icon of a CCTV camera means you’ve been spotted on one, and you’ll have to destroy the evidence to get rid of that. A symbol with two characters means the police have seen Jason and Lucia together, meaning you should split up to avoid being recognized. The hanger symbol means the police recognize your clothing so you should change. It seems like you can store clothes in your car, so having outfits at hand will be useful as long as nobody sees you changing.
The face icon means they recognize your facial features, so you probably should have been wearing a mask. To get rid of this icon, wear a mask, or if you’re Jason, you might be able to get away with changing your facial hair. The weapon icon means they’ve seen you carrying a specific weapon, and you can either ditch it or switch to something else. The vehicle icon means they recognize your car, and you’ll need to switch to another one.
There are likely other ways that the police can track you, but that’s all we saw in the extended gameplay.
The wanted stars will change color and pattern. If police have a direct line of sight on you, the stars will be solid white. If they start flashing, you’ve broken the line of sight and solid red means you’re still near the scene of the crime and the police are looking for you, but they don’t know where you are. The hollow stars mean the police have no idea who they’re looking for–in the extended look, Lucia flips off the police while driving past with hollow stars as her wanted level, and they do nothing about it.
In previous GTA games, the reaction of the police was quite binary. Either you messed up and they were coming for you, or you hadn’t done anything wrong, and they didn’t care. In GTA 6, it seems like this system will be more fleshed out. Police will have a wider range of approaches and reactions depending on what you’ve done and what they know.
To make things more interesting, you don’t see where the police are on the mini-map. There’s no more planning routes to avoid their vision cones, unfortunately. It’s a smart idea in terms of gameplay, though, as you’ll be less focused on the mini-map and more focused on what’s unfolding in front of you.
However, turning on Focus Mode will allow you to see through walls and spot where the police are. If you’re worried about turning a corner and bumping into the cops, use Focus Mode to check for them.
NPCs also seem more dynamic. If you’re walking around with a weapon and aiming it at people, they’ll behave more realistically by running away or calling the cops. Florida has open carry laws, so it’s realistic to walk around with a weapon on your back as long as you’re not aiming it at people–so NPCs won’t report you for it.
Cops won’t start chasing you unless your crime is reported. If an NPC sees it, they can report you. If you trigger an alarm, the cops will be notified, too. There are far more ways to get caught being a criminal in GTA 6.
All of these changes seem to be implemented to keep you engaged during a police chase. As you’re committing crimes, you’ll need to consider your getaway vehicle, your outfit, your weapons, potential CCTV and witnesses. That should factor into how you want to commit the crime–you might decide it makes more sense to commit a robbery at night because there are less crowds. Another thing to consider is that if you’re caught on CCTV, you might need to spend more time inside the building to find where the files are kept and wipe them so the police don’t have video evidence of your crime.
Generally, all of these decisions force you to follow the rules in GTA 6, which is strange for a game about breaking the law. However, it just means you need to be more conscious about how you’re breaking the law. In GTA 5 you’d grab any weapon and sprint down the road, fire your weapon, and act recklessly. In GTA 6, you’ll have to masquerade as a normal citizen until you can commit the crime that you want to commit.
It’ll be interesting to see how these systems develop the more time you spend in Leonida. Hopefully, all of these interactions will feel much more dynamic than previous entries in the series.
The wanted system isn’t the only thing getting a complete overhaul–GTA 6 also changes how you steal cars, while fishing and hunting doesn’t work like you think it does.
