Rockstar catching everyone off guard with an early release of trailer 1 for GTA 6 this morning (Tuesday 5th December 7:14 AM UTC +8) and lucky me, I was just setting up my YouTube notifications for the scheduled premier when the video came on. It’s safe to say my entire household was woken up to loud screams of joy from the computer room.
After 10+ years of waiting, fans of the record-breaking franchise are screaming for more after the trailer for GTA 6 dropped this morning. That long wait was answered with what looks like a very high-quality graphics game *based on the trailer. It was only a small trailer running around 1:37 seconds. But we got a lot of things to keep our imaginations running wild for the next year from this one clip.
The trailer showed that GTA 6 will be set in a fictional Vice City, reminiscent of Miami, and appeared to feature the first playable female character in the franchise.
Set to the Tom Petty song “Love Is A Long Road,” the GTA 6 trailer opens with a female character named Lucia being released from prison in what appears to be a fictionalized version of Florida.
Welcome back to Vice City.
We have been here before in Rockstars world. The Vice City game was well-received and highly playable. It took the franchise to new heights and captured the essence of the Al Pacino classic Scarface so well that we might of actually thought we were playing a Scarface movie video game.
A word dump of what we can expect in-game
-alligators will be in this game
-street bike gangs will be riding freely
-block parties
-prison breaks, police raids and body cameras
-live social media feeds parodying TikTok and Instagram
-multiple news reporting sites with our friends at Weazel News coming back
-armed robberies seem like a focus of the main characters
-swamp boats and swamp lands
-backyard wrestling
-festivals and specialists clubs like the Mud Club
-gangs of various stereotypes
-a cult
-access to buildings, apartments and more
-nightclubs and strip clubs
-romance
There are prob more telltale signs but I need to rewatch this 8 more times 😆 I’ve had time to think and I’ve got you covered on what’s happening in this first trailer. Read on to get the low down.
The predecessor GTAV (5) I’ve played start to finish at least 5 times, spent hours and hours crafting my stats and building my online player assets. I’ll do it all again because Rockstar makes it FUN to play. GTA V had 3 main characters but we get what seems to be 2 main characters in this game.
Here is the GTA 6 Official Game Trailer
Let that sink in. The lights, the graphics, the skylines and how populated that city looks. This game will set the tone for all future AAA games in development for the next 5-8 years.
GTA 6 is coming to PlayStation 5 console and XBOX Series X/S. The game will NOT be released for PC or PS4 at this stage.
GTA 6 Game Predictions
Game Instal: I can see this game taking up 100GB+ storage on your console. We could expect 30-35 frames per second, this type of high-quality graphic content deserves to be played on high-spec consoles. My word would be to juice up your console’s memory before this game drops.
Playable on Consoles: This game will have to be playable on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S to capture the bulk of the market. Rockstar has a knack for releasing playable PC versions of their games 12-14 months after the game releases. Netflix has just announced that they are bringing the GTA trilogy to their platform gaming product so we could see GTA 6 on Netflix at some point in the distant future.
Game Price Point: I think this game will go into presale mode in a week or two before the Christmas rush. I anticipate the price to sit between $120-$140. To be fair I don’t think it’s that bad if Rockstar drops all those who preorder some DLC content for being their first to order. I will happily drop that price for this game, I’ve only waiting 10 years for it.
Release Date: The official release date is set for 2025. No date to be sure but that’s what Rockstar is saying now. They released GTA V in September so we could prey for a September 2024 release date or its likely early 2025 release for this game title. I have a feeling we will see it in late 2024, it’s just a hunch.
RELEASE DATE UPDATE July 15th 2024: Rockstar Games parent Take-Two Interactive in May confirmed that GTA 6 will be released in Fall of 2025.
Map Details: There are no official map details but a fan of GTA @GTASIXINFO (X handle) dropped this fan-made art created from all the leaks and speculation from the last couple of months and to be honest it doesn’t look too bad. It’s almost a reverse of the Los Santos map but x8 times the size and we also have reason to believe that this map will continue to evolve as the GTA 6 world develops.
Who Are The Main Protagonists?
Meet Jason & Lucia
For GTA 6, Rockstar Games continues with multiple playable characters: Jason and Lucia—the first female protagonist in modern Rockstar history. Inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, they appear to be in a relationship. Players can switch between them anytime by pressing “Down” on the D-Pad—mirroring the character switch mechanic from GTA V.
They seem to follow a Bonnie & Clyde type of criminal romance or loosely follow the Natural Born Killers movie plot robbing diners and service stations, evading the law and trusting each other.
Alongside Jason and Lucia, GTA 6 originally planned for four playable characters—including Billy and Kai as listed in a leaked Dev Menu. Rockstar later opted to reduce the number to two protagonists. Other mentioned characters include Boobie, Chester (Chester’s Music), Dale (Dale’s Shopwell), Danny, Dre (Nightclub Manager), Iris (Iris Laundry), RB Shaw, Sam, Shanese, Tit (Nightclub DJ), Wyman, Vicky, YJ (Minimap), and Zach.
Character 1 Jason
We were teased when Rockstar was hacked with some rough developer graphics of Jason creeping around, crawling and shooting in very early-stage development way back in 2022. The character looks very similar to that early release but he’s now polished and looks like a normal guy who likes to rob things.
From the trailer, I think we will have either an Old muscle car or an ute as his personal vehicle. It’s hard to tell exactly from the cinematic trailer. There was no reveal of special abilities or anything else that made it look like he was a specialist in anything.
It’s clear that Jaon and Lucia are in some kind of relationship. They have a couple of embraces and exchange the words “trust” before the trailer shows them storming a general store to rob the place.
Character 2 Lucia
We first meet Lucia in the prison oranges speaking to what looks like her parole officer. She’s a little standoff with the officer.
There has been hype that she would be a Latina woman, possibly a criminal and rumours were that she had a small child as well. I didn’t see anything that led me to believe she has a child in this trailer 1 viewing. She’s also rumoured to be a hacker as her special ability, but that was not shown in the trailer.
I can confirm that Lucia is Latina, she was shown in prison and she was neck and neck robbing businesses with Jason multiple times. There looks to be an identity feature where if you cover your face you have less of a wanted level similar to the feature in Red Dead Redemption 2.
It was leaked but not confirmed that you started GTA 6 breaking Lucia out of prison. Seeing the trailer I cant confirm any prison break for Lucia but she was 100% in prison gear when she was introduced to us in the trailer.
Where is GTA 6 Set in the world?
GTA 6 is set in Vice City also going by Leonida (Florida). We have played GTA in Vice City way back and it’s a good feeling to come back for this next instalment. The casinos, the sun-drenched beaches, living on the water to the swampy marshes and exotic nightlife, looks to be an epic location for the next Grand Theft Auto.
Here is the skyline by day in Vice City.
That skyline goes on and on, it’s way bigger than GTA V Los Santos city mega sprawl. You can see the distance of buildings goes on and on. And this is a spec on the map, with 2 other cities that we know about.
Here is the skyline by night in Vice City.
As you would expect of Miami night scenes it’s gorgeous waterfront living and a lot of nightlife. Boats, yachts and dingys are all visible along with patches of lit-up areas. You also see a lot of high-rise apartments in the distance, this gives a real depth to gameplay possibilities considering we are seeing small portions of the map.
When I think of Miami and Florida I think of sun-kissed beaches, surf, sports and tropical weather. Rockstar must be inside my brain because this beach is what I imagined, and just look at how populated that beach is, crazy to see so many people. There is even a dog running in front of the guy in the blue shorts.
Other noticeable things are the attire of the women, some tattoos on the woman’s thigh bottom left, and a car reversing a trailer into the water to let off a jetski. I also want to point out that I can’t find duplicate NPCs in this picture, every NPC looks unique enough to be an individual. I’m getting excited at this and thinking of how big the world is, and how many unique and exciting side quests will pop up as you explore Vice City. Bring it on RockStar.
There are some epic-looking swamp lands paying homage to the Floria marshlands. We get a glimpse of a hovercraft boat steaming through the swampland waters. This gives off a little flashback feeling to the marshlands of Lemoyne in Red Dead Redemption 2. I can fully see some bumpkin missions in the swampland hiding out and recovering after big jobs.
In all of the GTA games I’ve played the water was part of the storyline in some way shape or form. I have a strong feeling that GTA 6 will take this up a notch. There are waterways, rivers and a lot of ocean in this trailer.
Things to note from the image below:
- Cargo boats (New) to the left of the frame
- Breakout islands around the main playable area
- A lot of car traffic, boat traffic and air traffic
- The unfinished bridge on the right
- Clearly defined water depth
Now let’s cover Vice City nightlife. Miami was the home of Scarface and you get that old feeling looking at this next image below. The strip of nightlife in the entertainment district doesn’t disappoint.
These exotic cars in the frame are a telltale sign of the type of people who frequent this area.
You can see a street busker with his pet Iguana on his shoulder to the right. He may be homeless, but he appears to be a busker. Plenty of people walking around and what appears to be a lot of places to visit in a very populated spot.
What Did The GTA 6 Trailer Reveal?
The trailer while very short revealed a lot of new features and gave away some of the gameplay features that I’ve been craving to know. The trailer took us on a roller coaster of a ride across the different regions of Vice City, introducing us to different types of people who frequent these regions. We also saw some new features for GTA and Ill go over those below.
Police Raids & Use of Bodycams
You will see in the image below, that the police are raiding a hideout or base of some bad guys, unless they are corrupt cops. The image comes from a police officer’s body cam if you see the image top right – Body 3 wording signalling a body cam. It’s unclear if this is Jason Lucia or another 3rd playable character.
There appear to be several types of live stream reporting features. One looks like it’s a news-driven stream and the other appears to be more of a parody on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, I’ll cover that next. This image below shows a naked man running from the police at a gas station, the caption reads “Usually got to hit the strip club to see that much jiggle” from a channel or profile called PlanetLeonidaMan a play on Florida Man.
The social media element can be seen below where channel or profile Have.A.Vice.Day captures a woman twerking on top of a speeding car nearby and writes “Someone call the department of transport on this dumptruck” so we can expect players and possibly NPC’s mobile phones to be integrated into gameplay. These video streams appear to be live streams in some parts of the trailer love hearts and comments flow alongside the video giving it some live stream feel.
Speaking of News channels we welcome back Weazel News from previous GTA games. This news channel is a live stream of activity as it happens, usually, if you rob something or kill someone prominent in GTA V shortly after the radio station will report your crime. What happens in the image below is a snapshot of police trying to stop a group of dirt bikes from breaking road rules, you will also see some breaking news headlines in the banner of the shot.
It’s not clear if you can be part of the bike gang, work with them or if they are just an NPC group who cause havoc. This is awesome and will be something that adds fuel to the fire just to get your crime listed on this type of TV broadcast, you just know people are going after status when you see this. Again well played RockStar.
Another new feature is the custom car meet ups, its a little hard to see here but there’s a big group of people gathering around custom cars in a side parking lot all checking the latest car to roll up. We see something like this with Hau and the races that Franklin gets to participate in.
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This looks on the next level, we also see at night time some drifting inside a circle of people with two cars circling a bonfire. These car meets are a great way to explore car mods and customise your vehicles. If there are car meets, car shows and more racing elements then this is a great V2 from GTA Vs car features.
Now this next feature I’ve heard rumours and can not confirm if playable characters can hang out of vehicles or not. This was the cinematic trailer, not a gameplay trailer so it’s hard to tell. This character was seen hanging out of a pickup truck while driving along the highway. There was a short view of Lucia sitting on top of a convertible driving on the freeway in the trailer but there’s not been any confirmation if we can hang out of vehicles or not.
This next feature will either get me in trouble with the wife or be celebrated by the millions of men who never venture outside of their computer room into the sunlight and masturbate to computer-generated images of women. I kinda hope my wife hates me for this but nonetheless, this feature shows off the graphic detail of the players and the access we have to buildings. It’s official gang we can enter buildings in GTA 6.
I think this is Lucia, I can not confirm that. This shows an apartment party space with chill pools, outdoor heaters (why), and guests of what I counted as 10 or so in one place. It’s very influencer vibes with the bikinis screaming D&G. It is rumoured that 60-70% of buildings will be accessible to enter, this is mental and if it’s true we really really got spoiled with this game.
The exploring won’t stop, the way NPCs will be programmed they will all be rotating through their daily activities so you will have a lot of exploring to do before you start noticing their habits. I like this feature and really hope we get to see more activity-based mini-games in buildings, one from my wishlist is hostage training in empty buildings, target practice and parkour.
It’s clear that the graphics for this version of Grand Theft Auto are shit hot. Ultra realistic and extremely detailed. We got a glimpse of how far the advancement had come with Red Dead Redemption 2 but this trailer shows that the development team is on another level.
Now staying on topic and talking about entering buildings, what RockStar have done with this feature is make buildings accessible to people and animals. You will see what looks like a big male gator entering the general store below. People in the trailer moved back and got the heck out of the way. This is great to see, it’s unique and weird and if you saw this in real life then hey stay safe. But people and animals can enter buildings.
I want to add another thing to touch on the internal graphics of buildings shown in the cinematic are phenomenal. Look below at the robbery scene with Jason and Lucia. This is mental how good this looks. The still does not do this justice, go and rewatch the trailer. I’m so damn impressed by this level of detail.
What I take away from the trailer storytelling is that both Jason and Lucia are criminals. They go after small-time robberies and are their own squad. I would imagine they go after bigger and bigger prizes as they grow their assets and skills. Here is a shot of them kicking open a door to a store before they start to rob the joint. This is all we can take from the trailer we have seen.
What Next for Rockstar Games and GTA 6
The trailer ends with a release date of 2025. The next steps for me are monitoring the Rockstar Games social channels, and the official website and set alerts for their YouTube channel. I’ll also spend some time watching other people’s reactions videos and visiting the GTA forums for what people think will happen.
I will also very closely watch GTA Online and GTA+ communities to see what happens there. It’s going to be a difficult one to predict what happens to GTA Online now with GTA V and GTA 6 released. It makes sense to push GTA 6 as the primary Online space, but then what happens to people’s assets that they purchased in GTA V Online space? Difficult to know how they will handle this so I’m watching this as it unfolds.
After what feels like an eternity of waiting I am relieved that the trailer dropped and we have that crumb of what happens next. My brain has been on overdrive all day thinking of what happens next, the opportunities and exploring Ill be doing when this game drops. I really hope this helped break it down for you.
Here is a look at the official GTA 6 Poster and Logo
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