NEW YORK—Over a decade after the last one, GTA VI has finally dropped an extended gameplay look with more details on what you can expect when it releases on November 19th of this year. One of the biggest additions, the blinker, promises to improve the player experience by adding another layer of realism while driving between, or during, crimes in the American underworld. That is, as long as you’re not driving a BMW.
This action-adventure classic took over a decade to make due to developers’ attempts to solve one problem: the BMW turn signal.
“When we added the turn signal to the game we all lost our minds, but the intern noticed that the BMW blinkers didn’t work. We figured it was an easy fix, but we had no idea we were battling 110 years of history,” said lead engineer Mark Gutierrez. “No matter what we did, the blinkers wouldn’t work. There were forces actively fighting us, but we couldn’t figure out what it was.”
The developers had no idea what they were up against. BMW drivers are notorious for treating their cars as if they have blinker deletes. The gas pedal takes care of lane changes after all. The stereotype had grown powerful enough to resist Rockstar’s attempts to code blinkers into the BMWs.
“We went through hundreds of engineers and every QA team found the same problem,” said Gutierrez. “It didn’t change no matter what we did. Well, it did change once, but it was a pop-and-burble tune that we didn’t even add.”
Despite Tesla drivers taking over the Worst Humans on the Road award, BMW’s reputation is clearly going strong. Its impact on the universe can now be felt inside GTA VI, and maybe you’ll think twice before making fun of how long the game took to release.
Rockstar confirmed it has stopped trying to fix the issue, saying any more rounds of development could push the game into the 2060s.