By now, you’ve probably seen the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI, the next game by Rockstar Games. It’s been watched a hundred million times at the time of writing, 115 million rather. And we’ve all reacted and talked about what’s being show in this 1 minute 30 seconds look of a new Vice City.
But let’s put all those talks into words on a website so that if anyone is searching it later down the road in 2025 (or 2026 should the game get delayed, it can still happen), to capsulise the thoughts of a person seeing this for the first time in 2023.
Welcome Back To Vice City
It looks like we’re back in Vice City, a fictional take based on the city of Miami, Florida. It will be the third time this city will be the star in Grand Theft Auto game (GTA Vice City wasn’t it’s only appearance, it appeared in GTA 1). The teaser image was clearly not hiding it, even if we didn’t know of the leaks, with the pink and orange hues used. That Miami vibe is reflected in the trailer too, which opens with a landscape view of a hazy sunset with a highway full of cars and the flights of birds (and a plane) to contrast that beautiful sunlight.
While the Vice City map in GTA Vice City was enormous for its time, it’s not particularly interesting by modern open world standards. And with GTA VI spanning beyond Vice City and into parts of the state of Leonidia (the TGTA’s version of Florida), it’s good that these wide shots established what sort of environments we can expect. Long freeways that go across the keys and into the heart of the city. Swamps where hovercrafts can glide along the water, flocks of flamingoes that you can startle, flatlands that are barely above sea level.
The one zoomed-out shot of the highway flowing through the keys show a second, under-construction bridge, which is likely to never be finished so we can do sick jumps. The opportunities to indulge in the usual GTA driving shenanigans should still be here.
The Density
The other fascinating thing we can see from the trailer is how dense the world feels. Just look at how many cars and vehicles are on screen. Shots where we can see land, sea and air vehicles moving along. The cars parked at the side of the strip where traffic is moving at a crawl pace. The rowdy folks on dirtbikes and ATVs, at least 10 of them were on screen in one frame, causing a ruckus on the streets.
And of course, just look at all the crowd scenes, full of people with all kinds of body shapes and sizes.
Whether any of these will represent gameplay remains to be seen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these shots are for in-game cinematics where scenes like this can be done. Let’s see how far these 9th-gen consoles, the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, can push the graphical limits. If this level of crowd and vehicle density is normal during moment-to-moment gameplay, it will be impressive.
The Cars (And Boats And Planes)
We don’t see anyone performing the crime of grand theft auto in the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer, but they sure were a lot of cars. And more importantly, car culture. There is are glances of car meet-ups being a thing. One shot shows a couple of low-riders, tuned cars and a superbike parked at the side of a road. A car boot (or a car trunk) is opened as folks are spotted hanging out.
Miami, if Need For Speed Heat taught me as much, has a large population of Latino and Hispanic folks. The 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data, as interpreted by Wikipedia, shows at least 70% of the citizens surveyed identifies as Latino or Hispanic. It’s good to see that reflected in the car culture. (And of course, one of the leading duo Lucia seems to be of Latino descent.)
There’s also that overhead shot of what looks to be a street takeover where multiple cars are seen doing donuts surrounded by a crowd (and their cars) blocking an intersection.
Rockstar has stopped making Midnight Club (despite them reminding that they made those in all their press releases), and it’s a shame we don’t have them make a car racing game any more, especially when there’s clearly the racing game space is lacking big, mainstream hits that can get non-car people be enthused about cars.
But at least the remnants of Midnight Club lives on in GTA. GTA V had street racers, but I hope from what’s shown here there’s more opportunities to be part of the car culture. And with GTA being a game about doing crimes, theoretically there’s no limits to what it can portray. It’s unbound from the constraints of being a racing game. It is bounded by scope and budget, however, but one would think Rockstar puts enough love for automobiles in a game named after the felony of carjacking.
On that note, we can also see more than just cars. There’s planes of various kinds, jet skis and boats, and the aforementioned superbike and hovercar. No signs of bicycles, however. What, don’t people in Leonidia don’t have bikes?
Leonida Man Shenanigans
It may be a bummer for some that GTA VI will revisit a locale we’ve seen before, but revisiting Vice City and the now-named state of Leonida in the current times mean there’s an opportunity to lampoon and parody the various Florida Man instances the world has been treated to.
News with headlines starting with “Florida Man” can entail some silly hijinks that some random person has done, or something dangerous and possibly illegal, or both.
I expect, nay, demand, that Leonida Man (or Leonida Folks, anyone can be a quackjob) encounters be a thing in GTA VI. We see shots via a currently-unnamed TikTok parody of people doing odd things in the trailer. One even has the handle PlanetLeonidaMan which strongly suggests that there is a GTA take on this fascinating phenomena within the game.
GTA V had the Strangers & Freaks sidequests, which produced some unhinged experiences. And these odd encounters are pretty much welcomed and celebrated in open world games these days. Like A Dragon is known more for its hilarious antics in the substories than the main plot, some may argue.
I hope we will be talking about many wild and/or hilarious Leonida Man moments.
Long, Long Road
It’s a surprise for that it’s a surprise for a good number of folks that GTA VI will not be out next year. Of course, most games these days won’t be announced until it’s closer to release. But that’s not the case for Rockstar.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was first teased and officially announced in October 2016. The game came out, after a delay, two years later in October 2018.
GTA V was revealed in November 2011. The game only came out in September 2013.
So, GTA VI announced in December 2023 and possibly releasing in 2025 makes sense based on previous track records. And we haven’t taken account of possible delays. And the PC gamers have to wait longer as GTA VI is only confirmed for a release on consoles.
It would be nice if Rockstar can keep up with the times and keep us in the dark for longer, and make the wait until release shorter like the rest of the industry has adopting. But can you blame them? Hackers have forced their hand after a rough build of the game was previously leaked. Even this announcement trailer got leaked hours ahead of time.
Still, the late Tom Petty sings true, love is a long, long road. Pretty on the nose to use that banger of a song for this reveal trailer, it works. For the gamers, the long road is us waiting in anticipation for the biggest game in the world and a labour of love, but it’s also for the developers working to get this labour of love shipped. Rockstar has some not-so-good work culture in the past, though a newer report suggests things have improved. It’s better for everyone one of us to know that someone didn’t die for their art.
Plus, the tension seen with Lucia and her male associate fits well with the song.
Whatever shape Grand Theft Auto VI will take once it releases in 2025, or later, at least this first look planted that seed for hype. We shall see if it delivers on what’s being promised here, or if we’ve hyped ourselves too much over a 1-and-a-half-minute trailer.