By Indie Game Dot Com Editorial Team | December 31, 2025
Obbe Vermeij, the former technical director at Rockstar North known for his work on the Grand Theft Auto trilogy and GTA IV, has shared groundbreaking insights into how AI is reshaping the development of GTA VI and the future of open-world gaming. In a recent interview with GamesHub, Vermeij detailed how AI-driven efficiency is tackling the “out of control” costs of AAA game production.
Automating the ‘70% Grunt Work.’
According to Vermeij, approximately 70% of modern AAA development costs are swallowed by repetitive, labor-intensive tasks such as asset creation, rigging, and optimization. AI is now stepping in to automate these processes, allowing for a massive leap in efficiency.
- Intelligent Rigging: AI can now analyze character models to automatically place skeletons and calculate realistic muscle movements, a task that previously required hundreds of hours of manual labor by artists.
- LOD (Level of Detail) Optimization: AI can reduce polygon counts for distant objects in seconds without visual loss, ensuring smooth performance in vast open worlds.
- Automated Bug Fixing: Real-time AI scanning can detect and fix “collision holes” or overlapping data in 3D models, significantly reducing the number of technical glitches.
‘Motion Matching’: The Secret to GTA VI’s Realism
One of the most anticipated features of GTA VI isn’t just higher-fidelity graphics, but unprecedented realism in movement. Vermeij highlighted “Motion Matching” as a key technology.
Instead of playing back thousands of pre-baked animations, AI analyzes the character’s speed, direction, and the surrounding terrain in real-time. It then blends tiny “animation building blocks” to create seamless, organic movements. This ensures that characters interact realistically with different surfaces—such as sand, water, or steep slopes—making the world feel truly alive.
Procedural Generation of Living Cities
Vermeij emphasized that developers no longer need to hand-craft every single alleyway or room. By setting a basic theme, AI can procedurally generate thousands of unique interiors, from furniture layouts to wallpaper. This suggests that GTA VI will offer far more indoor exploration than any previous entry in the series.
NPCs (Non-Player Characters) are also evolving. AI simulates social behaviors, determining how crowds disperse on a beach or how individual citizens react to a traffic accident, moving away from the mechanical patterns seen in older games.
“Liberating the Artists”
Despite the heavy integration of AI, both Rockstar and Vermeij remain cautious about using generative AI for core narrative elements like dialogue to maintain the “cinematic tone” the studio is famous for. AI will likely be restricted to minor interactions, such as shopkeeper banter or ambient street noise.
Ultimately, Vermeij views AI not as a replacement for developers but as a tool for liberation. By freeing artists from the “monotony” of rigging and optimization, they can focus more on what matters: mission design, storytelling, and creative world-building. As a result, GTA VI is poised to be the most dense and technically efficient virtual world ever created, setting a new benchmark for the industry.
Source: https://www.gameshub.com/news/article/obbe-vermeij-interview-2849146/
