Former Rockstar Dev Defends RAGE Engine Choice for GTA 6
Rockstar Games is one of the few video game companies who continue to use their in-house gaming engine
Unreal Engine has become the go-to video game engine for pretty much the entire video game industry, and for a good reason: it's much more economical to use a robust video game engine that already has most of the capabilities and features you need and build your game around it as opposed to building an engine that best fits the game you're trying to make. But Rockstar Games isn't just any other developer, and Grand Theft Auto VI isn't just any other game.
A number of AAA developers who have previously used in-house engines have been switching over to Unreal in droves, to the point of pushing the reset button on entire game projects to accomodate the change. With fan theories about the highly anticipated upcoming title rampant, some inevitably speculated if Rockstar would do the same.
For over a decade, Rockstar has used RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) for its games to great effect. To date, games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, built on heavily modified versions of the RAGE engine, can still graphically keep up with modern AAA titles. But with today's blockbuster games getting bigger, there's genuine concern that GTA 6 might fall short of expectations because of Rockstar's engine of choice.
If you ask one of the people behind the earlier Grand Theft Auto titles though, you shouldn't discount Rockstar and RAGE just yet.
In a reply to a fan on X, former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij (of course it is him!) had reassuring words to an inquisitive fan who asked him of his opinion about how the RAGE engine could "hold back the potential of GTA 6".
In his reply, Vermeij described Unreal Engine as the "best all around engine out there" but added that this isn't the first time Rockstar has made RAGE just as good as Unreal Engine and he believes that the developers will "manage again."
In the same tweet, Vermeij explained that Rockstar's decision to use an in-house engine makes sense because its titles have many specific features and effects that you can't just find anywhere else. Given the amount of money invested in GTA 6 so far and the expectations for it, it makes sense for Rockstar to use something that they can tweak down to the last details as opposed to adjusting their game based on an existing engine's capabilities.
With that said, GTA 6 marks Rockstar's first (and likely only) game made using the RAGE engine for the ninth generation of video game consoles.
