Difficulty customisation has shifted from monolithic preset tiers (Easy/Normal/Hard) toward granular, parameter-level sliders that decouple combat lethality, aim assistance, economic friction, and traversal challenge. For Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI), this trend is doubly relevant because Rockstar Games' previous title, Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2), already shipped a partial slider system in the form of targeting toggles (free aim, narrative auto-aim, wide and standard lock-on), and because the wider industry, led by titles such as The Last of Us Part II, Returnal and Spider-Man 2, has normalised dozens of independently tunable difficulty axes (Naughty Dog, 2020; Insomniac, 2023). This report surveys the design literature, RDR2's targeting model, and the accessibility movement that has reframed difficulty as a spectrum rather than a ladder, and identifies the likely shape of GTA VI's difficulty offering.
Classical game design treats difficulty as a single scalar adjustable through pre-defined levels (Wikipedia, 2025). Schreiber (2010, cited in Wikipedia, 2025) and Schell (2015, cited in Wikipedia, 2025) both argue that the ideal difficulty is personal — it should keep the individual player in a state of flow — and therefore "should be adjustable for or by the player in some way". Adams (2013, cited in Wikipedia, 2025) reinforces that ability and expectation are individualised, which a three-step preset can rarely satisfy.
The Game Accessibility Guidelines, an industry-authored standard endorsed by Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft, formalise this by recommending that designers "include a wide range of difficulty levels [and] options" so impairments, prior experience, and play context can each be accommodated (Game Accessibility Guidelines, 2024). This has translated into shipped systems such as The Last of Us Part II's sixty-plus accessibility toggles, which split enemy perception, enemy aim, ally support, ammo scarcity, and stealth assistance into separate axes (Naughty Dog, 2020).
RDR2 does not advertise a "difficulty slider" but ships one of the most influential targeting toggles in modern open-world design. Players choose between Free Aim, Free Aim — Assisted, Narrative (soft-lock to story-critical targets), Wide Target Lock, and Standard Target Lock; the option can be reconfigured separately for combat and for Dead Eye, and changed mid-mission from the pause menu (Rockstar Games, 2018, in Wikipedia, 2025). This grants effectively five lethality tiers without ever touching enemy health or damage values.
RDR2 additionally surfaces parameter-style choices that, taken together, behave like a hidden slider matrix: Dead Eye levels (which gate auto-marking and fatal-point indication), the "cores" system that drains health and stamina regeneration through hunger, sleep, and temperature, and weapon-degradation cleaning timers (Wikipedia, 2025). Each subsystem can be ignored, engaged casually, or pursued meticulously, which is functionally the player tuning their own simulation depth. Critics noted the result is a game that "is unfair to those who want pace" and "rewarding to those who want immersion" — the same content at radically different difficulties (Wikipedia, 2025).
Three convergent trends frame what GTA VI is expected to deliver:
Synthesising the above, a plausible GTA VI slider panel would include:
Crucially, sliders should be changeable mid-save without trophy or progression penalties, following the Game Accessibility Guidelines (2024) principle that difficulty changes must not be punished retroactively.
Rockstar's house style historically privileges authored experience over player customisation; RDR2's deliberately weighty controls were defended as authorial intent even where critics found them frustrating (Wikipedia, 2025). Over-exposing sliders risks diluting the curated tension of heist set-pieces, while under-exposing them perpetuates the accessibility deficit that has drawn industry criticism. The middle path — preset bundles ("Cinematic", "Standard", "Hardcore") layered over individually overridable sliders — is the model now common in AAA and the most likely template for GTA VI.
GTA VI is positioned at the intersection of two pressures: Rockstar's own RDR2 precedent, which proved that segmented targeting toggles can coexist with a strong authored tone, and a wider AAA norm of dozens of independent accessibility and difficulty sliders. The most likely outcome is an expanded RDR2-style targeting matrix supplemented by damage, economy, wanted-level and driving-assist sliders, presented behind curated presets to preserve narrative pacing while satisfying the now-mainstream expectation that difficulty be a personal, multidimensional setting rather than a fixed ladder.
Game Accessibility Guidelines (2024) Include a wide range of difficulty levels / options. Available at: https://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Housemarque (2022) Returnal [Video game]. Tokyo: Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Insomniac Games (2023) Marvel's Spider-Man 2 [Video game]. Tokyo: Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Naughty Dog (2020) The Last of Us Part II — Accessibility Features. Available at: https://www.naughtydog.com/blog/the_last_of_us_part_ii_accessibility_features_detailed (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Playground Games (2021) Forza Horizon 5 [Video game]. Redmond, WA: Xbox Game Studios.
Rockstar Games (2018) Red Dead Redemption 2 [Video game]. New York: Rockstar Games.
Schell, J. (2015) The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. 2nd edn. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Schreiber, I. (2010) Game Balance Concepts. Available at: https://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2025) Game balance. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_balance (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2025) Red Dead Redemption 2. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).