By Jason walks down the street with a donut in one hand and a beer in the other, taking a bite, then a sip, without stopping. That’s one of the first things The Guardian’s games editor Keza MacDonald brought back from Rockstar North in Edinburgh. She spent time at the studio ahead of launch, talked to co-studio head Rob Nelson and head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe, and previewed the visit in the paper’s Pushing Buttons newsletter on November 11. The full feature runs in The Guardian’s Saturday magazine on November 14. Here’s what’s known so far, through the retellings in Notebookcheck, Vice and Sportskeeda.
The details she saw
- Food and drink on the move. Jason can eat a donut and drink a beer at the same time while walking, without the game stopping him for a separate “eat” animation.
- The six-pack. When he runs carrying a six-pack of bottles, he presses it to his body with one arm, and the liquid in the bottles visibly sloshes.
- Guards’ feet. During a jewellery store robbery, Nelson picked at how a security guard was placing his feet. Not the gun, not the face. The feet.
That last one tells you more about the studio than any feature list. The head of a studio with a launch a week away is still looking at where an NPC’s heels land.
Why the beer is the interesting part
I’ve spent eleven years on effects and real-time graphics, and this is exactly the kind of thing I notice first. Eating and drinking at once while walking means the upper body and the hands run separately from the legs. Each hand has its own task, and both are layered on top of the walk. Most games still treat “eat” as a full-body clip that freezes you in place.
The sloshing is secondary motion: something that moves because something else moved. The bottles don’t decide to slosh, they react to Jason’s run. My guess is it isn’t a full fluid simulation, nobody spends that much on six bottles. It’s more likely a shader trick that tilts the liquid’s surface against the bottle’s acceleration. Cheap, convincing, and invisible unless someone points at it. Then you can’t unsee it.
The feet are the hardest of the three. A foot that slides a few centimetres on the floor breaks the illusion faster than a bad face does, because your brain knows exactly how weight works. That’s what Nelson was checking. How Rockstar builds movement from small blocks instead of loops, and the 600,000-plus animations behind it, is in our animation tech breakdown.
Research starts with the real place
The other theme of the visit is method. Rockstar studies a real place before it builds one. The team’s first research trips to Miami go back to 2015: clubs, bars on the Keys, police ride-alongs through South Beach. That’s the kind of research you can’t do from Street View: how people stand in line outside a club, how a cop talks to a driver at two in the morning. How close Vice City ended up to the real thing is in our real Miami vs Vice City comparison.
Eleven years from the first trip to launch. For a feature about a man eating a donut, that’s a long road, and it shows.
What comes on Saturday
The Pushing Buttons letter is only the preview. The big piece lands in Saturday’s magazine on November 14, five days before launch, and it’s likely to be the last long look inside Rockstar North before the game is in everyone’s hands. We’ll add the new details here once it’s out.
As for Jason, I already know what I’m doing in the first ten minutes of free roam: buying a six-pack and running.
FAQ
What did The Guardian see at Rockstar North?
Keza MacDonald visited the Edinburgh studio before launch and saw Jason eat a donut and drink a beer at once while walking, liquid sloshing in a six-pack he carries, and Rob Nelson checking a guard’s foot placement in a jewellery store robbery.
When is The Guardian’s big GTA 6 feature out?
In The Guardian’s Saturday magazine on November 14, 2026. The Pushing Buttons newsletter on November 11 was the preview.
When did Rockstar start researching Miami for GTA 6?
According to the visit, the team’s first research trips to Miami date back to 2015, including clubs, bars on the Keys and police ride-alongs in South Beach.