Ned Luke, who played Michael De Santa in Grand Theft Auto (GTA 5), recently shared his thoughts online about Rockstar Games’ GTA 6) after The Extended Look was released on August 27, 2026. Even though there’s no word on whether he’ll appear in the sequel, he still praised the game and its animation.
Ned Luke responded to GTA 6: Extended Look on YouTube and made it clear he doesn’t think GTA 5 and GTA 6 should be compared. He said the new pedestrian animations are a big improvement over what Rockstar did in the last game.
He explained that the pedestrian animations in GTA 6 now look natural. The characters’ eyes and movements seem lifelike, especially when compared to the stiffer, more limited walking cycles of pedestrians and NPCs in GTA 6, which came out thirteen years ago.
Still, Luke hasn’t been credited or confirmed for a role in Grand Theft Auto 6, and as far as we know, he isn’t involved in making the game. His support for GTA 6 is based on his technical perspective as a fan.
When GTA 5 was released in 2013, it used blended motion-capture cycles combined with limited inverse kinematics. This means the game could only partially adjust where characters’ feet or hands landed during movement, rather than following a fixed path. As a result, the characters now feel less realistic and a bit stiff compared to newer games.
Even though he isn’t confirmed to be involved with GTA 6, Ned Luke’s opinion carries more weight than most fans or developers because he played a lead character in GTA 5 and spent many hours doing motion capture and voice-over work. Ned Luke said:
“Watch the way people move. The walks are actual human walks. We still had a little bit of that mechanical thing going with our walks and the way we’d stand. For me, I felt like my legs were never fully straight. They always had this little bend in them.”
He continued: “The technology has grown by leaps and bounds, you know? What would make you think it’s going to be better than those games? It’s no diss to those games. It’s like between GTA 5 and GTA 4. Our graphics blew GTA 4 away. They weren’t even close.”
Many fans who watched GTA 6: Extended Look said that Jason and Lucia’s gunfights and chase scenes felt similar to those in GTA 6. Some also thought the graphics looked worse than Rockstar Games’ 2018 game Red Dead Redemption 2. Ned Luke responded to these comments:
“This looks nothing like Grand Theft Auto 5. I think they’re out of their minds. Sorry, guys, you’re wrong. The graphics here beat Red Dead. I’ll tell you one thing: I never looked that good,” he said, pointing to Jason Duval in the game.
