Ex-Bethesda Animator on Rockstar: "Their Games Are So Polished"

Former Bethesda animator Jeremy Bryant, who spent 15 years at the studio, recently appeared on the Kiwi Talkz podcast, where he discussed his time in game development — and praised Rockstar’s work on GTA 6.

While Bryant expressed doubts that The Elder Scrolls 6 would boost Bethesda’s popularity, he believes GTA 6 is a different story entirely. According to him, Rockstar's upcoming game might involve as many as 3,000 developers.

"[Rockstar] are such masters. Their games are so polished. You always wonder, 'how do they do it?' GTA 6 yeah it's taken like 10 years, I get it, but I went and looked at the credits for Red Dead and they had like 500 animators. There was like 80, 85 just gameplay animators and another 80 cinematic ones and another 100 face ones. Those team sizes, it's bonkers. I think the overall dev size they said was around 1,600 I think on Red Dead 2," Bryant said.

Still, he doesn’t necessarily see Rockstar as an ideal workplace. With teams that big, he said, it's hard to build meaningful connections.

"How do all those people communicate and form any kind of bond at work when it's just a random thousand people sitting shoulder to shoulder like on an assembly line. I don't know, that doesn't sound all that great to me. It sounds terrible," he added.

The full interview with Jeremy Bryant is available below. Previous guests on Kiwi Talkz have included former Rockstar animator Mike York.