GTA 6 Nearly Dropped the Weapon Wheel, Jason Schreier Reports

Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier visited Rockstar North for his big GTA 6 feature, and on October 19 he posted a follow-up video with things that didn't make the written story. The most talked-about part: GTA 6 came close to losing the weapon wheel.

This is reporting from a trusted journalist, not an announcement from Rockstar, so we mark it as likely.

Why did Rockstar want to replace the weapon wheel?

According to Schreier, Rockstar wanted GTA 6 to handle guns more like Red Dead Redemption 2, where you only carry a few weapons on you instead of a whole arsenal. Studio head Rob Nelson told him the team worried that a GTA 5 style wheel would mostly show the slots you can't fill.

So the team spent "months, if not years" on alternatives. Schreier mentions trays, web-style menus and even tests with no menu on screen at all. None of them worked as well, and the finished game uses a weapon wheel again.

What can you carry in GTA 6?

Reports on the video describe a loadout of:

• one pistol,
• two long guns,
• one melee weapon,

with extra weapons kept in your car's trunk. That matches what we expected on our combat and weapons pages. We'll confirm the details when the game is out.

Other things Schreier learned

• Narrower roads: art director Aaron Garbut told him GTA 6's streets are much narrower than GTA 5's, which means denser blocks and more buildings packed into Vice City.
• Details nobody planned: Garbut said no single person has the whole game in their head. Artists get room to add small touches they think are cool, the same culture that gave Red Dead 2 its famous horse details.
• A long project: some artists have been on GTA 6 since 2015 or earlier. Schreier also repeated that development struggled for direction from about 2019 to 2022, and that some designers left in that period, before things picked up around the first trailer.

GTA 6 is out on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.