Rockstar Games have dropped the new trailer for their upcoming release Grand Theft Auto VI a day earlier than planned due to unexpected leaks.
It is a bummer for Rockstar to have their highly anticipated first-look be leaked ahead of their planned release window. But that just means that we get to see it a day early, and it certainly does not take away from the hype surrounding the game.
There is a lot to take away from this trailer, so let’s dig into the details; but not before watching it one more time!
Grand Theft Auto VI… CE
As you can see from the incredible new trailer, Grand Theft Auto VI will be taking us back to Miami, Florida aka “Vice City”.
The game is not explicitly called “GTA6: Vice City”… or at least not yet. But they made no attempt to shy away from the obvious return with a closeup shot of a “VICE” sign à la the Vinewood sign from GTA5.
GTA6 is giving us very strong “Florida Man…” meme vibes with the use of Floridian street crime culture, and also leveraging modern day social media culture as a strong element as well.
In fact, many of the shots featured in the trailer were cell phone and social media post related. Ironic, since we could have anticipated the hype surrounding the trailer release on social media, and strong likelihood of a leak.
Trailer Details
The entirety of the new GTA6 trailer focuses on cutscenes, so we did not get a game play demonstration quite yet.
We did get familiar with the new main female protagonist, Lucia, who will be returning to Vice City after a stint in the slammer.
Early GTA6 rumours did suggest that the game would focus on both a male and female character and touch on relationship SIM territory. The story certainly seems to be about their relationship as partners in crime. Surely some tough choices will be given to the player deciding their fate.
Grand Theft Auto VI does have the appearance of a modern title, making use of all of the best current tech. The scenery is shockingly beautiful, and the character models are near perfect.
It still has an exaggerated character feel from the iconic GTA universe, leaning just slightly into cartoon territory rather than aiming to be 100% realistic like a current gen Call of Duty title.
Of course, we are looking at a curated trailer with cutscene shots and no game play. But this still suggests that we are going to be getting the most visually impressive Rockstar title to date.
With their previous release being Red Dead Redemption 2, that is saying a lot. Because anybody familiar with that title knows that it is one of the most beautiful to hit home consoles.
The Future
The piece of information that was obviously quite disappointing to all of us was the release window expectation for Grand Theft Auto VI. Rockstar finished their GTA6 trailer with the dismal “COMING 2025” tagline that surely hurt the hearts of many.
Just to keep you reminded, GTA5 released in September of 2013 and Red Dead Redemption 2 released in October of 2018. So it is safe to bet on a Q3 2025 release, putting Grand Theft Auto VI twelve years after GTA5 and seven years after Rockstar’s previous major game release.
As painful as that is, we should come to expect these kinds of development periods from a current generation video game. Especially if we expect it to be as great as we know Rockstar titles to be.
The previously mentioned GTA5 and RDR2 are some of the best video games of all time. And both titles are still massive sellers 10 and 5 years after their debut. We can all expect that GTA6 will live up to the expectation of the next best video game to enjoy for many years after its release.
Grand Theft Auto VI is a current generation video game, through and through. So we likely will not be covering it on Retro Dodo much beyond today’s trailer. But even us retro-heads love current video games.
And the ties to Vice City, one of the best PS2 games of all time, gives us enough of an excuse to talk about it today!
