Since GTA 6 Trailer 2 dropped on May 6, 2025, showing off the delayed action game in stunning detail, fans have been doing what fans do best – comparing every pixel to Red Dead Redemption 2. The results? Red Dead Redemption 2, now seven years old, still holds up shockingly well against what’s supposed to be the most advanced open-world game ever created. But the comparison also reveals exactly where Rockstar pushed boundaries with the RAGE 9 engine.
The gaming community immediately started recreating GTA 6 trailer screenshots in RDR2, matching camera angles, lighting conditions, and character poses. Reddit threads filled with side-by-side comparisons demonstrating that while GTA 6 clearly looks better, the graphical leap isn’t as dramatic as previous generational jumps. That’s actually high praise for both games – RDR2 for aging gracefully, and GTA 6 for representing the cutting edge of what’s currently possible.
The RAGE Engine Evolution
Understanding the GTA 6 vs RDR2 graphics comparison requires understanding the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine evolution. RDR2 ran on RAGE 8, which Rockstar developed specifically for that game’s massive scope and detail. The engine introduced physically-based rendering (PBR) to Rockstar games, allowing materials to interact with light more realistically through properties like reflection and roughness.
GTA 6 uses RAGE 9, a substantial upgrade that builds on RDR2’s foundation while introducing next-generation features. The biggest addition? Ray-traced lighting and reflections throughout the entire game world. RDR2 had none of this, relying instead on traditional rasterization techniques that fake lighting effects through clever tricks. Ray tracing simulates how light actually behaves in the real world, bouncing off surfaces and creating accurate reflections and shadows.
According to technical details shared by Rockstar developers, RAGE 9 includes real-time physically simulated water, improved vehicle deformations with significantly more polygons, enhanced AI for NPC interactions, and more realistic time-of-day transitions. The engine also features procedural generation for objects and environments, adding variety and unpredictability to the world in ways RDR2 couldn’t achieve.
Draw distance received massive improvements. GTA 6 renders far more of the world simultaneously, allowing players to see across Vice City and into the surrounding Leonida countryside without the fog and pop-in that occasionally plagued RDR2. Resolution also jumped dramatically – GTA 6’s base assets run at higher resolutions than RDR2’s, particularly for character models, clothing, and environmental textures.
Where GTA 6 Clearly Wins
Despite RDR2’s impressive longevity, GTA 6 demonstrates obvious advantages in specific areas. Hair physics represent perhaps the most visible upgrade. Trailer 2 showcases Lucia’s ponytail swinging and blowing in wind with unprecedented realism. Every strand moves independently, reacting to her movements, the environment, and even weapon recoil. RDR2’s hair looked good for 2018, but it was more rigid, with less individual strand simulation.
Jiggle physics and body dynamics got serious attention. Rockstar implemented realistic physics for body fat and muscle movement. Big bellies, breasts, and buttocks react naturally to character motion rather than remaining stiff like dolls. This applies universally – male and female characters of all body types move with weight and momentum that feels genuinely human. RDR2 had basic body physics, but nowhere near this level of detail.
Water simulation completely transforms aquatic environments. GTA 6’s real-time water physics creates waves that respond to boat movement, weather conditions, and underwater topography. You can see individual droplets, spray effects, and accurate reflections on water surfaces. One fan on Twitter noted that even beer bottles show realistic bubbles rising to the surface with accurate refraction through the glass. RDR2’s water looked beautiful but was more static, with limited interactive properties.
Interior density jumped massively. The gas station shown in GTA 6’s security footage contains shelves packed with individual products, each textured and lit independently. Bakery displays, lottery ticket counters, refrigerators full of drinks – every surface contains details players could easily miss. RDR2 had detailed interiors for story locations, but GTA 6 appears to maintain that density across mundane spaces like convenience stores.
NPC density and variety reached new heights. GTA 6 aims for the densest crowds in any Rockstar game, with NPCs featuring higher quality hair, clothing, and animations than RDR2’s citizens. Each character appears unique rather than obviously repeated models. Their AI reportedly includes more complex routines, making them feel like actual residents rather than props filling space.
Ray Tracing Changes Everything
Ray-traced global illumination fundamentally alters how GTA 6 looks compared to RDR2. Light bounces naturally between surfaces, creating realistic ambient lighting in shadowed areas. Colors bleed from one surface to nearby objects. Indirect lighting fills rooms through windows without looking flat or artificial. This creates atmospheric depth impossible with RDR2’s lighting model.
Reflections gained similar treatment. Ray-traced reflections accurately mirror the world on car bodies, windows, wet pavement, and water surfaces. In RDR2, reflections used screen-space techniques that only reflected objects already visible on screen. Turn your camera away and reflections broke. GTA 6’s ray-traced solution eliminates these limitations, showing accurate reflections regardless of camera position.
Where RDR2 Still Impresses
Despite being built on the older RAGE 8 engine, Red Dead Redemption 2 remains visually stunning in ways that occasionally match or even surpass GTA 6. Art direction deserves massive credit here. RDR2’s naturalistic Wild West aesthetic, with its earthy color palette and atmospheric weather effects, creates timeless beauty that transcends technical specifications.
Environmental storytelling in RDR2 set standards GTA 6 must now match. The attention to detail in abandoned homesteads, hidden caves, and wilderness camps created a world that felt genuinely lived-in. Every location told stories through environmental clues. While GTA 6’s urban density is impressive, RDR2’s wilderness had its own form of meticulous craftsmanship.
Animal behavior and ecosystems in RDR2 remain unmatched. The hunting mechanics, predator-prey relationships, and realistic animal animations created ecosystems that functioned independently of player intervention. GTA 6 will have wildlife in the swamps and countryside, but matching RDR2’s animal simulation quality while also rendering dense urban environments presents enormous challenges.
Weather systems in RDR2 achieved remarkable realism with fog rolling through valleys, rain creating mud and puddles that persist, and snow accumulating dynamically. The way storms developed gradually rather than instantly switching on felt organic. GTA 6’s weather looks impressive in trailers, but whether it matches RDR2’s meteorological sophistication remains to be seen.
Character facial animations in RDR2 set industry standards that even current-gen games struggle to match. Arthur Morgan’s expressions conveyed subtle emotions through minute muscle movements. Conversations felt genuine because characters’ faces reacted appropriately to dialogue. GTA 6 appears to maintain this quality based on trailer footage, but that’s meeting RDR2’s bar rather than dramatically exceeding it.
The Modding Factor
PC gamers have kept RDR2 looking modern through graphical mods that enhance lighting, shadows, and texture resolution by 10-20 percent over vanilla settings. TAA (Temporal Anti-Aliasing) mods eliminate blurriness while maximizing detail. Terrain upscaling mods increase environmental texture quality. These modifications demonstrate how much headroom RAGE 8 still contains for visual improvements.
When comparing modded RDR2 to GTA 6 trailer footage, the gap narrows considerably. Outside of ray tracing and asset density, modded RDR2 competes surprisingly well with next-gen GTA 6. This speaks to both the mod community’s talent and RDR2’s strong technical foundation that continues supporting visual enhancements years post-release.
The Diminishing Returns Problem
Why doesn’t GTA 6 look as dramatically better than RDR2 as that game looked compared to GTA 5? The answer lies in diminishing graphical returns. Each generational leap delivers smaller visible improvements as games approach photorealism’s limits. The jump from PlayStation 2 to PlayStation 3 was massive. PS3 to PS4 was significant but smaller. PS4 to PS5 shows improvements requiring side-by-side comparisons to fully appreciate.
GTA San Andreas to GTA 4 represented a quantum leap – entirely different rendering techniques, orders of magnitude more polygons, completely new lighting models. GTA 5 to RDR2 showed refinement rather than revolution. RDR2 to GTA 6 continues this trend. The improvements are real and substantial for those who understand graphics technology, but casual observers might struggle to articulate what exactly looks better.
This doesn’t diminish GTA 6’s technical achievements. Creating ray-traced lighting across an open world the size of Leonida while maintaining stable performance represents extraordinary engineering. But the visual payoff becomes harder to convey in screenshots or even trailers. You need to play these games, experiencing them in motion, to fully appreciate the enhancements.
What This Means for Performance
Here’s the uncomfortable truth – all these improvements come with performance costs. Former Rockstar animator Mike York, who worked on both GTA 5 and RDR2, expects GTA 6 to run at locked 30fps on base PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles. Rockstar will prioritize graphical fidelity and world simulation over frame rate, exactly as they did with RDR2.
“I don’t think they’ll be able to pull off 60fps,” York explained in an interview. “They’re gonna try to optimize as much as they can to where it never goes below 30. But it can be bumped up to 40, 41, 52, whatever.” He predicts true 60fps won’t arrive until PC versions release with hardware powerful enough to handle RAGE 9’s demands.
This makes the RDR2 comparison even more relevant. RDR2 also ran at 30fps on base consoles, prioritizing visual quality over frame rate. Players accepted that trade-off because the game looked incredible and the 30fps felt smooth and consistent. If GTA 6 maintains similar stability while looking better, most players will accept that compromise despite the gaming community’s ongoing 60fps obsession.
PS5 Pro might manage higher frame rates through AI upscaling technologies like PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution). These techniques render games at lower internal resolutions then use machine learning to upscale images to 4K while maintaining quality. If Sony’s upscaling proves effective, PS5 Pro could potentially hit 60fps while looking nearly as good as base PS5 at 30fps.
The Billion Dollar Development
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rockstar spent over $1 billion developing GTA 6. That staggering budget funded years of RAGE 9 engine development, motion capture for hundreds of characters, voice acting, extensive testing, and countless iterations on systems ranging from AI routines to water physics. For context, most AAA games cost $100-300 million. GTA 6 costs more than multiple typical AAA titles combined.
That investment shows in the trailer footage. Every frame demonstrates expensive production values – professional actors with motion capture, photogrammetry-scanned environments, meticulously crafted animations, and obsessive attention to details like beer bubbles that 99 percent of players will never consciously notice. Rockstar could have spent less and still produced a successful game. Instead, they pursued perfection.
The budget also explains the delays. Originally targeting fall 2025, GTA 6 slipped to May 2026, then again to November 19, 2026. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick explained the delays ensure “the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.” With $1 billion invested and expectations astronomically high, Rockstar can’t afford to release anything less than masterpiece-quality work.
Trailer 2 became the biggest video launch in history, hitting 475 million views across all platforms according to Rockstar. That viewership demonstrates the pressure Rockstar faces. Millions of people watched every second of that trailer frame-by-frame, analyzing graphics, dissecting details, and forming opinions that will shape GTA 6’s reception. The game must deliver on the hype that trailer generated.
Frequently Asked Questions
What engine does GTA 6 use?
GTA 6 uses RAGE 9 (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine version 9), which features ray-traced lighting and reflections, real-time water physics, procedural generation, improved AI, and significantly enhanced draw distance compared to the RAGE 8 engine used in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Does GTA 6 look better than Red Dead Redemption 2?
Yes, GTA 6 shows clear visual improvements over RDR2, particularly in ray-traced lighting, hair physics, water simulation, NPC density, and interior detail. However, the improvement is more incremental than revolutionary due to diminishing graphical returns as games approach photorealism.
When does GTA 6 release?
GTA 6 launches November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. The game was originally scheduled for fall 2025, then delayed to May 2026, and delayed again to November 2026. PC release will likely follow 12-18 months after console launch.
Will GTA 6 run at 60fps on console?
Former Rockstar animator Mike York expects GTA 6 to run at locked 30fps on base PS5 and Xbox Series X, similar to Red Dead Redemption 2. True 60fps will likely require PC hardware or PS5 Pro with AI upscaling technology.
What graphical improvements does GTA 6 have over RDR2?
GTA 6 features ray-traced global illumination and reflections, real-time water physics, enhanced hair and body physics, higher polygon counts for vehicles and characters, improved draw distance, denser NPC crowds, procedural generation, and higher resolution assets throughout the game world.
Why does Red Dead Redemption 2 still look so good?
RDR2’s exceptional art direction, physically-based rendering, detailed environmental storytelling, realistic weather systems, and outstanding character animations create timeless visual quality. The RAGE 8 engine was advanced for 2018 and still holds up remarkably well seven years later.
How much did GTA 6 cost to develop?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rockstar spent over $1 billion developing GTA 6, making it one of the most expensive entertainment productions in history. This budget funded RAGE 9 engine development, motion capture, voice acting, and years of iterative refinement.
Is GTA 6 gameplay or cutscenes in Trailer 2?
Rockstar confirmed Trailer 2 contains equal parts gameplay and cutscenes, all captured in-engine from a base PlayStation 5. However, distinguishing which portions are gameplay versus cutscenes proves difficult due to the high graphical fidelity throughout.
The Verdict
Comparing GTA 6 to Red Dead Redemption 2 reveals two important truths. First, RDR2 represents such extraordinary craftsmanship that it remains competitive with next-generation games seven years after release. Rockstar built something timeless, a game that prioritized artistic vision and technical excellence in equal measure. The western setting, attention to detail, and RAGE 8’s capabilities combined to create something that ages gracefully.
Second, GTA 6 represents the cutting edge of what’s currently possible in open-world gaming. Ray tracing, procedural generation, advanced physics simulation, and unprecedented asset density push boundaries in ways that won’t fully manifest until players experience the game firsthand. Screenshots and trailers can’t convey how these systems interact during actual gameplay.
The comparison also demonstrates gaming’s maturing as a medium. Like film in the 1960s or music in the 1990s, video game graphics are approaching technical limits where further improvements become increasingly difficult to achieve. Future advances will focus more on artistic direction, system interactions, and emergent gameplay than raw polygons and texture resolutions.
For Rockstar, the challenge is meeting expectations set by both RDR2’s legendary quality and GTA 6’s $1 billion budget. The trailers look incredible, suggesting they’re succeeding. But trailers always look incredible – the question is whether the full game maintains that quality for 60-100+ hours of gameplay across a map possibly larger than RDR2’s.
Based on everything shown so far, GTA 6 appears positioned to become another Rockstar masterpiece that defines its generation. Whether it surpasses Red Dead Redemption 2 depends less on technical specifications and more on subjective preferences about setting, story, and gameplay. Some will prefer RDR2’s wilderness and western themes. Others will embrace GTA 6’s urban chaos and criminal intrigue.
One thing’s certain – the bar Rockstar set with Red Dead Redemption 2 was so high that even their own massively expensive, technologically advanced sequel only looks incrementally better in direct comparisons. That’s not a criticism of GTA 6. It’s recognition that RDR2 was that damn good. And if GTA 6 matches its quality while adding modern enhancements, we’re all winners. Even if we have to wait until November 2026 to actually play it.