Rockstar spent years trying to ditch GTA VI's weapon wheel before keeping it, says Jason Schreier

Status: Report. This comes from Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, based on his visit to Rockstar North and conversations with head of development Rob Nelson. Rockstar hasn't commented.

The weapon wheel nearly didn't make it into GTA VI. Jason Schreier has posted a video on his YouTube channel, "Some New Things I Learned About Grand Theft Auto VI And Rockstar," with material that didn't fit in his Bloomberg feature. The headline detail: Rockstar spent months, possibly years, trying to replace it.

Why they wanted it gone

According to Nelson, the team went into GTA VI planning a limited arsenal like Red Dead Redemption 2, where Arthur carries only a few guns and the rest stay on the horse. With that few weapons, GTA V's wheel would have been full of empty slots.

In Schreier's words, they tried "a million different things": trays, webs, even dropping the interface entirely. None of it stuck. "After all that, they just wound up back at a weapon wheel and in the final game it's just a weapon wheel again," he says (TDGN, ComicBook). It's the same wheel shown in the gameplay that premiered on Netflix in August.

What does change

The wheel coming back doesn't mean a bottomless arsenal. GTA VI limits how many guns you carry, the Ultimate Edition includes a weapon locker for picking a loadout, and NPCs react when you draw a gun in public. Rockstar hasn't said how many weapons fit or exactly how the limit works.

The hard years

Schreier also says that between 2019 and 2022 the studio still hadn't settled what game it was making: how much Red Dead realism to bring in without losing GTA's pace. Some designers left, frustrated by the lack of direction. Things started coming together in late 2022 and early 2023, and the first trailer in December 2023 helped the team see what it was building.