GTA 6 fans thankful of 'insane' story length as there won't be another game for years
GTA 6's story length has been officially revealed by a leading figure at Rockstar Games, and people are thankful that it'll take at least 80 hours to complete as we won't be expecting another game in the series for at least a decade.
It has been 13 years since GTA 5 first released and countless fans of the series have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the game — but only a fraction of that has been spent on the comparatively short main story.
Completion-tracking site HowLongToBeat estimates that the series' last entry takes about 32 hours to finish if you just do the main story, with that total extending beyond 50 hours if you add in some side content, yet Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, has revealed that GTA 6 will nearly double that at the very least.
How long will it take to beat GTA 6?
As reported by the New York Times, Nelson indicated that his most recent play-through of the game reached the 80-hour mark, and he appeared to only complete the main story alongside 'some optional goals with narrative ramifications'.
If you consider that side content to be part of the wider narrative – as it does appear to directly feed into the game's story – then you can believe that GTA 6 is nearly three times longer than its predecessor.
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This suggests that not only is the story far more expansive, but there is likely to be a wider variety of content for Jason and Lucia to explore and get stuck into along the way, and the recent Extended Look gave us just a small glimpse of that.
We saw the pair get caught in police chases, carry out robberies, deal with a heist, and even face the heat of a police raid — and there's a good chance that we've only scratched the surface of what the full game has to offer.
It seems more comparable to the story presented in a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 – which is roughly equal to that 80-hour completion mark – and could be a much bigger part of the overall GTA 6 experience than some fans expect, especially as your reputation looks to have a significant impact.
Why are fans happy about this?
Fans of the game have almost unilaterally expressed their excitement to this revelation about the game's narrative length, with many pointing towards the amount of time we're going to have to wait for a sequel as the main reason why.
"I hope it is true," wrote one commenter in Reddit in response to Nelson's comments. "With how I tend to play these types of games (I play them slowly and enjoy the scenery) I will easily turn that 80 hours into 150+ hours.
"11+ years wait for this game," the post continues. "Lets enjoy it as much as possible cuz we ain't getting another GTA until at least 2035."
Some have even noted that 2035 is probably an optimistic estimate anyway, as it already took 13 years for GTA 6 to come out and greater expectations could push a prospective GTA 7 release into the 2040s at the very least.
One group that might not necessarily be too happy about the game's length, however, are soldiers who have exchanged re-enlistment for just four days of holiday at release — as with an 80 hour estimate they'd effectively need to be playing round the clock to complete the game before going back to the army.
It's definitely something to consider if you're planning on taking time off in general at release, and everyone might need to rush the story as much as they can in order to avoid being spoiled by content that's inevitably shared on social media soon after release.