Even Grand Theft Auto's original creators haven't been able to play GTA 6

After a 13-year wait, two delays, and several high-profile leaks , the launch of Grand Theft Auto 6 is fast approaching. The next chapter in the nearly 30-year-old series, where players explore open worlds and break the law, has created an extraordinary level of anticipation. And with developer Rockstar Games keeping their biggest release yet, tightly under wraps, even the people who helped bring the original to life aren't getting special treatment.

"We're all waiting to see what they've done," Dave Jones, GTA's co-creator, tells me, sitting alongside the original game's writer and publicist, Brian Baglow. The original Grand Theft Auto was released in 1997 in Dundee, Scotland by DMA Design, a relatively small team, at least judging by later games' standards. Following its success with puzzle game Lemmings, the studio was toying around with the idea of making a racing game, initially called Race'n'Chase.

Sitting in the state-of-the-art computer lab at Dundee's Abertay University decades on, Jones tells me the developers still felt they had to bring something new to the table.