Placing GTA V and GTA VI side by side is an unfair comparison: one was born for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2013, while the other was built for the current generation. Still, the images of the two games show something interesting. The visual jump of GTA VI is evident, but Los Santos still retains a strong identity and a scenario reading that holds the weather well.
In official GTA VI materials, the difference appears less in “quantity of pixels” and more in the scene as a whole. Vice City has more people on the streets, more objects, reflections and more complex lighting, as well as characters with much more detailed skin, hair and clothes. In GTA V, much of this work needed to fit in machines with a fraction of the memory and processing power available today.
It is also worth separating what has already been shown from what is still expectation. Trailers and captures suggest a denser and more varied city, but Rockstar has not yet publicly detailed systems such as artificial pedestrian intelligence, NPC routine or all forms of interaction with the environment. The visual comparison is concrete; conclusions on simulation depth still need to wait for the game.
GTA V also benefited from years of recovery and improvement. Who plays today on the PS5, Xbox Series or PC is not seeing the exact same technical presentation of 2013. This helps explain why certain comparisons seem less distant than would be expected between two games separated for more than a decade.
In the end, GTA VI does not need to delete GTA V to show evolution. The most interesting thing is to realize how Rockstar changed scale: the old game impressed by what it could do within the limitations of that generation; the new one tries to use the current hardware to put more detail, movement and information in each scene. The complete difference, however, only can be measured when GTA VI is in the hands of the players.
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