IGN traces the cinematic style of GTA VI back to San Andreas

The cinematic style of GTA VI goes back to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from 2004, according to IGN. In a new video in its Art of the Level series, the site looks at one mission from that game: Reuniting the Families.

The video of about 12 minutes appeared on 9 October. It starts from the extended look at GTA VI on Netflix. That felt like a one-off episode of a crime thriller, according to IGN.

Rockstar and film

Rockstar has always had one eye on film, IGN says. It calls Red Dead Redemption 2 the greatest western never filmed. GTA III and Vice City were full of references to crime films and had voices from Hollywood.

With San Andreas, Rockstar wanted more, according to IGN. The game is set in California in the nineties. Rockstar built missions that seem to come straight from the cinema and put the player in the leading role.

Reuniting the Families

The mission is the second to last of the first chapter, in Los Santos. Sweet calls the sets of the Grove Street Families together in the Jefferson Motel. The police storm the meeting with a helicopter and a SWAT team.

Carl Johnson fights his way through the motel to find Sweet. On the roof the two shoot down a second police helicopter. Big Smoke and Ryder then pick them up by car, with police cars and motorbikes in pursuit.

The chase ends when the car crashes through a billboard of Sprunk into a fuel tanker. The police think the four are dead after the explosion.

IGN calls the mission heavily scripted and well directed. San Andreas gives up the freedom of its open world here for a tighter story. That makes the escape more dramatic than anything the series had told until then, IGN says.

How many missions in GTA VI are built this way is not known. GTA VI appears on 19 November for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S.