Rockstar Games has confirmed that GTA VI will not satirize current real-world events, according to an interview with the Parisian fashion magazine Love, as reported by Eurogamer. The studio's senior vice president in charge of narrative, Rupert Humphries, explained that the game will focus on creating an invented world rather than reflecting the real world. This approach aims to make the game's universe more absurd than reality, avoiding the risk of it appearing outdated at its release. Humphries noted that the GTA series has historically avoided focusing on national politics, with GTA IV being an exception due to its post-9/11 setting, which directly inspired the game's Liberty City. Rockstar aims to create games that match their time period without necessarily reflecting the real world exactly, and thus refuses to target specific people, events, or movements. The choice of Florida as a setting offers "a lot of material" for GTA VI, according to Humphries. The studio has built its world by "populating it with the necessary characters and cultural wars to make it alive," and has many means to tell these stories without imposing dialogues on the player. The narrative can pass through elements such as "a sign announcing an election, an automated call from a campaign, a radio advertisement, or political talk shows where these topics are discussed." Humphries compared this method of narrative through world-building to that of Red Dead Redemption 2, which was a historical reconstruction using similar tools. The emphasis is not only on not simply reflecting the world as it was, but on making everything satirical, bigger than life, and more grotesque. Otherwise, one could simply go out and live in the real world. In the same interview, Rob Nelson, co-lead at Rockstar North, indicated that he had made concessions on the "realistic" aspect of the game, simply because "sometimes, you have to make sure that things are not too realistic in order for them to be pleasant for players." Realism can greatly help with immersion, but too much realism can seem tedious, so the studio is trying to find the right balance. GTA VI is scheduled to be released on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 starting November 19.