Thirteen years ago, when Grand Theft Auto 5 was originally released, fans were confused as to why Rockstar had downgraded its signature series Wanted system. The mechanic, which informs players of how ardently the in-game police will pursue them, went from six stars in Grand Theft Auto 4 to a mere five stars. Recent gameplay leaks of the open-world shooter reveal that the classic Wanted system is back. Grand Theft Auto 6‘s cops may have even been upgraded.
Clips that display the Wanted system in action keep getting pulled down by GTA 6 publisher Take-Two, but Polygon reviewed the footage closely prior to the DMCA claim. In it, game co-protagonist Jason can be seen exiting his car to beat a man with a wrench. Curiously, you can hear police over the megaphone before Jason gains any stars. As sirens wail in the distance, police communicate with one another about Jason’s whereabouts via megaphone. It almost seems the mechanic is built to function as a warning so that players can change course.
The man on the ground suffers many hits before he groans and apparently dies. This fills two stars in the top-right corner of the screen; four others remain greyed out. From here, it takes approximately ten seconds for a single police car to appear, and a couple more for another to join it. The clip ends before Jason can gain any more Wanted levels, so we don’t know how the system progresses.
In GTA 5, one star signaled a minor crime where players could easily avoid arrest. Depending on the type of authority figure trying to apprehend the player, a single star could, however, begin a shootout.
At two stars, a minimum of three police cars will chase the player more aggressively. At this stage, police wearing bulletproof vests start setting up roadblocks and manning helicopters to reach the player. Law enforcement also attempts to shoot to kill.
At four stars, GTA 5‘s police begin arriving in riot vans — except now, they’ll shoot without leaving the vehicle or aircraft. And at five stars, GTA 5 stops spawning normal NPCs and begins swarming the entire game with police officers. The game will continue sending police until the player dies or otherwise evades law enforcement.
While most are used to this system now, one of the most pervasive complaints about police in GTA 5 is that the Wanted system feels aggressive compared to previous games. Police can respond to crimes called in by NPCs, outside their own view. Cops also search for the player across the entire map, with each individual officer having their own field of view. Beyond the lack of gradation, one of the reasons this system seemed more intense to fans is because pursuers on helicopters can see within a vast radius.
Another reason fans were fixated on the five-star Wanted system was because data miners found evidence Rockstar did attempt a six-star system at some point. And since GTA would dispatch military tanks after the player at six stars, the ensuing chaos was considered an iconic part of the game.
Bringing back tanks would make longtime fans happy, but such a system may feel cartoonish compared to GTA 6′s more grounded tone. In the clip, we can see three icons under Jason’s Wanted level: a coat hanger, a torso, and a car. Fans theorize that cops may be able to track players based on their last known car and appearance. Possibly, they’re capable of much more than that — the clip doesn’t show higher Wanted levels.
There were motivating factors for Rockstar to make the Wanted system more complex. One pesky misconception about GTA 5 asserted that the game punished Franklin, the game’s Black protagonist, more severely than other characters. Rockstar denied that police were programmed to be racist. The fact people readily believed this idea may speak to how poorly GTA 5 tuned its Wanted system. With GTA 6, Rockstar can bring back nuance.
