Okay, Rockstar, That Was A Good Trailer, But Can We See Some GTA 6 Gameplay Now?

The long-awaited second GTA 6 trailer gave us a pretty good idea of who Jason and Lucia are, while also peeling back the grime of Vice City to show us its sweaty, humid vibes. But I'm not sure it sold me on the game any more than the first trailer did.

I get it. We're playing as a Bonnie & Clyde-inspired duo, where one might even be a cop, only it's in a satirical GTA sandbox riffing on viral Florida memes. We've known that for over a year now. I want to know what sets it apart from GTA 5, and where that enormous, purported $2 billion budget has gone beyond beer bubbles and chipped nails. How have the police chases evolved? Just how interactive is Vice City? What elements, if any, have carried over from Online?

Please, god, not the Oppressors.

Those in-depth breakdowns of how advanced the systems and world of GTA 5 had become, making Los Santos feel as real as it looked, are what sticks out to me all these years later, more than any cinematic montages. Watching as a developer drove under a bridge to avoid police chases, with the arbitrary minimap hot zones replaced by real, immersive searching, requiring you to duck in a car so that you could stay out of the line of sight, was exhilarating. I was hooked, desperate to get stuck in — not for the story, but to see if I could master the more intricate five-star wanted levels.

Rockstar, I just wanna see some gameplay.

GTA 6’s Second Trailer Was A Mix Of “Gameplay And Cutscenes”, But I Want The Full Hog

Granted, we did see a little bit. The trailer looked so good that a lot of people simply didn’t believe it was captured on a base PS5. So, Rockstar clarified in a statement that all the footage shown, which was “equal parts gameplay and cutscenes”, was recorded on Sony’s hardware. What portions were gameplay is up for debate.

Some have speculated that Jason benchpressing and Lucia going ham on a punching bag are part of a San Andreas-inspired weight training mechanic, while others believe they’ve pinpointed the exact moment we get to choose between the pair for a mission. That’s cool and all, but cruising around Vice City is the meat of the GTA 6 pie: I’m not sure I care about anything scripted.

The ‘gameplay’ we see is so seamlessly integrated that it feeds into the cinematic storytelling, rather than giving us any good indication of what GTA 6 might feel like when it’s in our hands. It’s easy to sit back and imagine that it’ll just be more GTA 5, but there were so many layered nuances that made GTA 5 feel leaps and bounds ahead of its own predecessor, even if on the surface, they appear strikingly similar. It’s the fine details that Rockstar excels at, making each entry feel as revolutionary as the last, and you can hardly capture that in a sweeping montage like what we’ve seen so far.

Unfortunately, all we have to go off of right now is from leaked builds, and I hardly want to pore through years-old alpha footage that was outdated when it was released. It’s not representative of what the game will look like when it launches next year, and even then, it didn’t give us many details beyond the fact that it looks like GTA. No way.

There’s an unusual air of mystery around this decade-in-the-works sequel, and while I’m glad we have another trailer and finally have a concrete release date, I just hope Rockstar begins to whittle away the hard shell it’s put up around GTA 6 soon. Kudos to the fans who are invested enough to study the moon cycle, but unless I see some gameplay, I’m gonna lose interest.

Grand Theft Auto 6