Recreating GTA 6 screenshots in GTA 5 made players notice how terribly outdated the previous installment of the series is

Graphics don't age on their own – the next game ages them. Until someone raises the bar, yesterday's masterpiece looks like the peak of photorealism. With Grand Theft Auto the effect gets absurd, since the only thing that can ruin the look of a GTA is the next GTA.

A fresh example popped up on Reddit. One player posted shots from GTA 5 next to new GTA 6 promo material and admitted they couldn't remember the older game looking this bad.

The comparison wasn't even with the PS3 version, but with the modern one Rockstar has re-released several times: on PS4 and Xbox One in 2014, on PC in 2015, and on PS5 and Xbox Series in 2022.

The problem is that beneath all those layers of polish, it's still a 2013 game built for Xbox 360 and PS3. Those consoles launched in 2005 and 2006, only a year or two after San Andreas.

Commenters pointed out that, hardware-wise, GTA 5 could have run as far back as 2005, while GTA 6 is built around PS5 and Xbox Series, meaning 2020-era tech. That's a gap of almost 15 years, and no patch will close it.

Rockstar almost always squeezes every last drop out of a platform. San Andreas pushed the PS2 to its limit, GTA 5 did the same to the PS3 in its day, and Red Dead Redemption 2 did it to the PS4.

Now it's the PS5 turn, which is why GTA 6, like its predecessors, will run at 30 fps. Grumbling about that seems odd when you remember how many people played GTA 4 on PC at 20-something frames and decided the slideshow was worth it.

The comparison itself isn't entirely fair, though. GTA 6 promo shots are carefully staged, with the sun position picked, depth of field tuned, and a cinematic filter laid on in places. The GTA 5 shots get almost none of that treatment, so a better comparison would be old promotional screenshots.

Skeptics also bring up the Watch Dogs trailer from E3 2012, after which the release version was a noticeable letdown. Red Dead Redemption 2, however, looked just as good at launch as it did in its trailers, and the extended GTA 6 showcase was captured on a standard PS5.

Perception is always relative. One player put it plainly:

I genuinely used to think GTA 5 was as good as games were gonna look

Someone thought exactly the same about GTA 3 after the blocky polygons of the PS1 and N64 era. And in 2013, somebody was surely saying they didn't remember GTA 4 looking that rough.

In 2004, San Andreas already lost out visually to Half-Life 2 and Far Cry. Rockstar openly admitted that flaw back then, betting instead on the scale of a map with three cities.

In ten years, someone will post GTA 6 next to GTA 7 and be shocked all over again.