This is the second week in a row that we’ve seen a rumor for the all-but-guaranteed sequel to Grand Theft Auto V. Following rumors from last week alleging that GTA 6 would feature a female lead, this is something more concrete. In early 2019, Take-Two filed a patent for a Rockstar-developed system for NPCs in an open world. It was eventually approved in October of last year, but was only found by an eagle-eyed Reddit user four days ago.
The patent’s called ‘System And Method For Virtual Navigation In A Gaming Environment.’ As the title suggests, its goal is to build on past GTA games’ NPC AI to create a realistic world that isn’t hampered by hardware and software limitations. The patent specifically mentions traffic patterns for characters driving any number of vehicles. Notably, the system mentions each NPC choosing or otherwise being assigned different characteristics for driving and traversal. Some characteristics include breaking time, acceleration and top speeds. The patent also specifically mentions that the system is designed for an online multiplayer game and would rely on cloud software to bypass hardware limitations.
The patent itself contains no concrete mention of GTA 6 or the Grand Theft Auto franchise. However, over the past few months, multiple sources have alleged that GTA 6 is in development at Rockstar. That’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility given their development patterns over the past 15 years.
While GTA 6 is likely in the pipeline, Rockstar still hasn’t revealed any details on their upcoming re-release of GTA V on Xbox Series X|S and Playstation 5 since its initial announcement in June. Since Rockstar still hasn’t gone into much detail about what exactly they plan on adding to their most successful game, it’s entirely possible that this new system could be designed for a new area or part of GTA V that Rockstar hasn’t revealed yet.
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