The former president of Rockstar North, Leslie Benzies was instrumental during the development of the open-world action-adventure franchise known as Grand Theft Auto.
After the 17-month sabbatical since September 2014, his departure from the game development company managed to shock fans and gamers of GTA, especially those who were eagerly waiting for the next game of the franchise, GTA 6.
With the departure of Benzies, many people believe that it would shake things up with the GTA 6 development team. As a result, the game could be actually delayed for its projected 2018 release date. In the meantime, a lot of gaming critics believe that the absence of Benzies would not have a really major impact on the development and final release of GTA 6.
Benzies has spent 15 years of his time with Rockstar and contributed a lot to the franchise but it was not all him and in the end, it was completely a team effort. The only manner in which GTA could be affected is if the remaining Rockstar team decided to join Benzies after his departure.
Since they did not, the core development team is pretty much intact and as a result, we can expect GTA 6 to be as awesome as its predecessor. In reality, Benzies has been out since September 2014 and it was before the time when Rockstar launched GTA 5 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. After that, the game was released on PC in April 2015.
Therefore, Benzies was away from the company during all the important milestones for GTA 5 and the GTA franchise as a whole. Benzies was still away even during the release date of the highly anticipated GTA Online Heists.
A lot of DLCs have arrived for the online multiplayer version of the game ever since last year and Benzies was absent that entire period. Meanwhile, the recent rumors regarding the delay of GTA 6 launch could indicate that Rockstar is deciding whether to launch the game before or after the release of the next-generation PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
Everything is speculation at this point since Rockstar is yet to confirm or deny any such report, especially concerning their gaming consoles.
Meanwhile, critics are encouraging gamers to focus on GTA 5 at the moment and recently, it received a ‘The Last of Us’ mod where the streets of Los Santos have been customised to provide the feel of a post-apocalyptic setting, as reported by ValueWalk.
When GTA 5 was released to the Xbox One and the PS4, it ended up breaking tons of records. It even generated $1 billion sales in just over a week. $800 million of sales was generated in one single day and within 3 days; it reached the $1 billion mark. It has been made one of the most successful games of all time with 60 million units of the game being shipped.
Right now, a lot of fans are wondering whether Rockstar has already started working on the upcoming GTA 6 game. When the next title appears, there are various new features which have been suggested to become a part of it. One of the things to be improved is the Cop AI.
The cops in GTA 5 get really unrealistic in the higher wanted levels when it is simply impossible to escape them and it gets extremely challenging in nature.
Another particular suggestion is that the NPCs could start calling the police when they witness a certain crime. This would be similar to Watchdogs which released on consoles around a couple of years back. Meanwhile, GTA 5 excelled in many different aspects but one part where it sucked was the inability to enter various buildings.