Bullet penetration — the ability of projectiles fired in‑game to pass through cover materials such as wooden doors, drywall, sheet metal, glass and thin masonry rather than terminating on first contact — has become a defining feature of "realistic" shooting simulations across the past two console generations. As Rockstar Games prepares to release Grand Theft Auto VI on 19 November 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S (Rockstar Games, 2026), expectations for upgraded ballistic systems are unusually high. The game is being developed on the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE), the same family of engines that powered Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) in 2018, where Rockstar invested heavily in granular damage modelling, body‑part targeting and shot‑placement physics (Wikipedia, 2025a). This report examines what bullet penetration through doors and walls is likely to look like in GTA VI, situating it within the lineage of modern open‑world and tactical shooters, and grounding speculation in publicly documented RAGE features, the September 2022 source leak, and the broader state of terminal ballistics simulation in games.
Terminal ballistics — the study of a projectile's behaviour upon impact — depends on bullet mass, composition, velocity and shape, with penetration scaling roughly with kinetic energy concentrated over the smallest cross‑sectional area (Wikipedia, 2025b). Modern shooters approximate this with per‑material penetration tables. Counter‑Strike established the convention of bullet "wallbang" damage, scaling residual damage by material thickness and a per‑weapon penetration coefficient. Battlefield and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019/2022) extended this to dynamic, destructible cover, with full‑metal‑jacket rounds defeating drywall, sheet steel and car doors but losing energy through brick. Escape from Tarkov and Insurgency: Sandstorm model penetration as an interaction between ammunition penetration value and material armour class, with ricochet, fragmentation and post‑penetration velocity loss simulated frame‑by‑frame.
Rockstar's own track record in this space is mature. RDR2 already allows shots to penetrate thin wooden walls, doors and even animal hides differently based on weapon class — pistols, repeaters, rifles, shotguns and high‑powered sniper rifles each carry distinct penetration profiles, and the Dead Eye targeting system permits the player to mark individual body parts for non‑lethal disabling shots (Wikipedia, 2025a). The same engine framework is the foundation on which GTA VI is being built (Wikipedia, 2025c).
While Rockstar has not publicly detailed GTA VI's ballistics, three concrete signals point toward a significantly expanded penetration system. First, the 2022 source‑code and asset leak — described by The Guardian and Kotaku as one of the largest in industry history — revealed work‑in‑progress combat encounters featuring detailed bullet impact decals, splintering wood doors and ragdoll responses that already exceeded RDR2's fidelity (Wikipedia, 2025c). Second, the second official trailer released on 6 May 2025 contained gameplay footage demonstrating reactive environmental damage, with visible penetration through screen doors and stucco walls during a shootout sequence in Vice City (Rockstar Games, 2026). Third, Rockstar's promotional copy emphasises modern law‑enforcement tactics including police body cameras and SWAT response, gameplay elements that historically require credible cover‑and‑penetration mechanics to function as designed (Wikipedia, 2025c).
Practically, GTA VI is expected to implement a material‑classified penetration system in which each surface (wood door, hollow‑core interior wall, drywall, stucco, brick, sheet metal, ballistic glass, concrete) carries a thickness value and an attenuation coefficient. Each bullet is expected to carry its own kinetic energy, calibre and jacket type, losing energy on each material traversed and continuing as a still‑damaging projectile on the far side until energy falls below a lethality threshold. This mirrors the real‑world principle that armour‑piercing rounds with copper‑jacketed steel cores retain energy through hard cover, while expanding hollow‑points dump energy on first contact (Wikipedia, 2025b). Expected consequences for gameplay include suppressive fire through cover, blind‑firing through doors during home invasions, NPC police using rifles to defeat car doors, and stealth dynamics where silenced subsonic rounds fail to penetrate cover that supersonic rifle rounds defeat with ease.
Compared to GTA V (2013), where penetration was binary and largely cosmetic, and to RDR2, where it is meaningful but constrained by period‑accurate calibres, GTA VI's modern setting in Leonida (a fictional Florida) opens the door to a contemporary weapon roster: 9mm pistols, 5.56×45mm and 7.62×39mm rifles, .50 BMG sniper systems and modern shotguns, each with realistic real‑world penetration profiles to draw from. If Rockstar matches the level of simulation seen in RDR2's hunting and shot‑placement systems, GTA VI may become the first mainstream open‑world action title to combine cinematic gunplay with a genuinely simulationist penetration model, raising the floor for the genre.
Bullet penetration through doors and walls in GTA VI is poised to be one of the game's most consequential under‑the‑hood upgrades. Built on a mature RAGE foundation, informed by RDR2's ballistic groundwork, and validated by leaked footage and the second trailer, the system is expected to model per‑material attenuation, residual lethality and tactical cover degradation. While the final scope will only be confirmed at the November 2026 launch, the available evidence strongly suggests GTA VI will treat walls and doors not as impenetrable boundaries but as participants in the gunfight.
Rockstar Games (2026) Grand Theft Auto VI. Available at: https://www.rockstargames.com/VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2025a) Red Dead Redemption 2. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption_2 (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2025b) Terminal ballistics. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_ballistics (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2025c) Grand Theft Auto VI. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).