It’s been over ten years since the release of Grand Theft Auto V, and after all that time we finally have a glimpse at Rockstar Games’ vision for the future of the franchise. In what is bound to be some of the biggest gaming announcements of the year, the nearly one-and-a-half-minute reveal trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 gives us our first glimpse of the re-imagined Vice City (GTA’s take on Florida) which was rumored as the game’s setting for years. Rockstar is currently targeting a 2025 release date window for the sequel.
The GTA 6 trailer plunges us into some of Grand Theft Auto’s bread and butter: scenes of women twerking, stores being held up at gunpoint, plenty of carjacking, and crime heists making national headlines. It opens on a woman named Lucia. She’s wearing a correctional facility outfit. Someone asks, “Do you know why you’re here?” She responds, “Bad luck, I guess.”
While GTA 5 sported a trio of protagonists, it looks like GTA 6 is taking a dual-protagonist approach with two characters who seem inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, which again was a heavily circulated rumor. At the moment, it’s unclear whether GTA 6 will bring back the massively popular GTA Online multiplayer mode, but that seems like a given.
GTA 5 notably introduced a smartphone your character could use to contact associates, take photos, and do the kind of stuff iPhones were capable of in 2013. GTA 6 is taking this a step further. The trailer is full of what appear to be clips from an Instagram-style app, including plenty of live streams with comment feeds. How exactly this will factor into the gameplay remains to be seen, but you can definitely expect the franchise’s specific take on American culture to shine through.
GTA 6 saw a long and complicated road to get to this point, including a data breach in September 2022 that resulted in a massive leak of in-development footage. At the time, some speculated that it could have a domino effect on the game leading to delays. However, Inverse spoke to industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls at the time who said, “Any disruption will probably be overcome in parallel to continued development.” Harding-Rolls did point out a delay was likely no matter what and that it “won't be obvious why [a delay] has occurred.”
At the moment, Rockstar is targeting a release date sometime in 2025, and we’ll have to wait and see if the studio can meet that goal. While this initial trailer is just a small taste of what fans can expect, Rockstar will likely have more to share throughout 2024.
