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With the sheer amount of time that Grand Theft Auto VI has been in production for, you’ve got to expect some new innovative features that have rarely been seen before. Typically, most games are played in a few pretty archetypal bodies; muscular or athletic characters, rarely anything else.
“GTA 6 is rumored to feature a dynamic body mechanic,” including eating and exercising in their many forms, according to possibly leaked images on Twitter.
Well, if the rumours can be believed – GTA is revisiting its San Andreas past, which let you put on weight if you eat enough fast food at Cluckin’ Bell or any of the other fine food establishments across town. There were even rumours that you could fall ill to a heart attack, though this was pretty emblematic of the urban myths that kept gaming healthy during the early 2000s.
The latest GTA VI rumour comes courtesy of the internet and unnamed, unverified sources, so you can of course take this with a pinch of salt. Images seem to show off the same character in two different scenes, one with a sculpted and athletic build, and another with a larger frame. It’s difficult to judge whether or not these images have any sense of truth to them, though the tiny chihuahua running towards the screen is a pretty dead giveaway they’re not.
Yet, GTA fans have been asking for this feature for a while. It’s entirely in-line with the themes of its world which encourages customisation and role-playing to the absolute extremes.
Video games tend to have a history of presenting larger characters through a derogatory and negative lens. If a character designer can’t decide on how to make a character evil or creepy, they just add an exaggerated number of pounds to their weight, and maybe make them lose a bit of hair too. To add on-to this, they’re almost always NPCs without any of the agency that a main character gets. There are exceptions to these rules, of course. Hades 2’s Hephaestus was a larger character who was not portrayed in a horrible light at all. Of course, this was decried by grifters.
Rockstar have a pretty good opportunity here to treat larger folk with the respect they deserve, and I think it’s pretty likely we’ll see it happen – regardless of how believable those images are.
