In a new interview, Rockstar has discussed its revered approach to crafting the satire the Grand Theft Auto series is famous for – particularly relating to GTA 6 and whether the game should include, and lampoon, real-world politics.

Speaking to the Paris-based fashion magazine Love, for a feature story in issue 27, (photographed and spread on X), Rockstar said it favours creating its own world and fictitious events, rather than piggybacking the events in ours. This isn’t necessarily because it’s protecting its back, but more to make its own world even more ridiculous, and to guard against a game feeling dated by the time it’s released.

“If you go back to previous GTAs, there’s never really been much focus on national politics,” said Rupert Humphries, senior vice president of narrative of Rockstar. “The rise of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act were pretty central to GTA 4, but that was mainly because post-9/11 New York was a real frontline for those issues. Because we are trying to make games that feel very specific to the moment they are released, but at the same time, not reflective of the exact world we live in, we don’t want to be too specific about any particular person, event, movement or anything like that.

“If there’s a trend blowing up for six months, you need to see it for what it is and not jump on the bandwagon” -Rupert Humphries

“Making a game in Florida though, there is so much to work with,” Humphries added, “and we have really tried to build out our world – filling it with all the characters and culture wars necessary to make it feel alive. And then we have so many ways to tell these stories outside of actually meeting characters face to face. You can see a sign for an election, receive a robocall from a campaign, or hear a commercial on the radio. And then we have some great political talk shows on the radio too where they discuss all these issues.

“Red Dead Redemption 2 was essentially a historical recreation, with a lot of the same tools we have used to make GTA 6; there is a big focus on not just holding up a mirror, but on making everything satirical, larger than life, and more grotesque. Otherwise, you could just go outside and live in the real world! We try to get to the heart of whatever issue we want to talk about and then explode the part of it we find interesting until the ridiculousness of the position becomes really clear and hopefully funny too.”

The other thing to keep in mind, Humphries said, is the game’s development time. Rockstar has worked on GTA 6 for “years and years” so it needs to fill the game with events and stories that still feel “vital” when the game is released. “If there’s a trend blowing up for six months, you need to see it for what it is and not jump on the bandwagon,” Humphries explained.

Were Rockstar simply to try and recreate the world we live in – the sort of approach it used for Red Dead Redemption 2, because that historical period has long passed – it wouldn’t be enough. It would be replicating the world outside your window. “It’s not interesting,” Humphries said. “If you are going to put all this effort into creating a version of today’s world, it has to be more over the top, more insane, more in your face.”

Rockstar said similar things to IGN in a GTA 6 interview not so long ago, with Rockstar North’s Rob Nelson assuring people “there’s always stuff to satirise”. “As long as humans are humans, other humans will figure out ways to satirise what we do,” Nelson said. But Rockstar has to be “careful” what it chooses to satirise such that it doesn’t feel “dated” when the game arrives, he stressed, underlining that thinking.

Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives 19th November, which is alarmingly close at hand. It’s an enormously ambitious project, pushing the levels of realism and interactivity – sometimes very controversially – that players can expect from a simulated city, while telling a kind of Bonnie and Clyde love story between co-protagonists Jason and Lucia. Indeed, keeping their relationship together appears to be one of your overriding objectives in the game.

But while Rockstar prepares to release what’s expected to be its most successful game ever, the company also faces employment-related legal difficulties in the UK, after abruptly firing 31 workers from the Rockstar North studio in Scotland last year. That case – which revolves around allegations of union-busting – is being tried in an employment tribunal right now.