Rockstar has released the Extended Play trailer for GTA 6 and has confirmed both the return of some GTA favourites, but also some big changes in the gameplay with some significant changes in how the Wanted Stars will work.

Watch the video above to see it in action.

The best news for fans of the series is the return of six wanted stars. While they were present in the codebase for GTA 5 they never made them into the game, meaning that players were unable to experience the army coming after them in military vehicles.

In all the official trailers and media releases, there’s no mention yet of exactly how the military might chase you in six stars but we do know a few things. Firstly, that the cops will chase you map wide if you have six stars. Then we are on to the expected mechanics which should include a delay before military vehicles reach you as they will have to take off from a military base which suggest that jets might come after you as well as the traditional tanks.

The big change – 6 types of heat to evade

The biggest change of all will transform the way you think about wanted stars and how you play the game, meaning you’ll need to be a smarter criminal and plan your criminal activity more carefully to avoid heat.

Here are the changes we know about so far:

  1. Someone will need to witness your crime to get wanted stars or at least there will be a delay which means you may want to ensure no one is around when stealing a car
  2. There are two detection areas (unless you have six stars). A red circle with higher chances of detection and a lighter red circle with less chance of running into the cops. Escape both and the stars should disappear after a short delay
  3. There are now four different types of stars: Red – in the detection zone, but cops don’t have line of sight; White – cops have line of sight; Flashing White – cops don’t know where you are and you are about to lose stars; Empty: no wanted stars
  4. Another huge change is that cops don’t appear on your mini map. So you can’t just watch their viewing zones. There is however a new ‘Focus‘ setting which will show you the cops location temporarily even through walls
  5. The cops will have longer memories particularly if you return to the scene of the crime even after losing your stars

Then we’re onto the different types of heat which reflect how much the cops know about you and you’ll need to do to escape them all. These changes mean that you’ll need to consider these factors when doing your crime and do things like take out CCTV, wear a mask or only steal a vehicle without a tracker (the more expensive ones will have trackers but you can get these removed later in the game by visiting a Pay’N’Spray).

  1. Identity: the cops know what you look like. Wear a mask!
  2. Clothing: the cops know what you’re wearing. Change your clothes!
  3. Weapon: they know you had a gun. Don’t carry a weapon!
  4. Partner: they know you’re with the other person. Split up!
  5. CCTV: you were seen on CCTV. Delete the CCTV footage!
  6. Vehicle: they know which vehicle you’re in. Change vehicle!

The overall concept is that you’ll need to think more like a master criminal and be more strategic in your gameplay. There’s even an honour-style system somewhere similar to Red Dead Redemption whereby the type of criminal you are will affect your overall rating, but it’s not believed to affect your gameplay, e.g. you can still go on a rampage, it will just affect your criminal type, similar to GTA player descriptions.