The Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer has arrived (a bit earlier than expected) and in the single day it’s been online it’s already been watched by about 90 million people. That’s more than the entire population of Germany. It’s also broken a Guinness World Record becoming the most viewed videogame reveal within 24 hours.
New flash: people are interested in GTA 6! If you haven’t seen the trailer yourself yet, you can watch it below as soon as you explain where you’ve been for the last day.
The trailer looks great, except for that unfortunate “2025” at the end, coupled with the boner-killing bummer of the revelation that GTA 6 won’t launch on PC simultaneously with the consoles. Boooo.
The other problem: the trailer is only 91 seconds long, and while we’re left satisfied by the pretty colors and moving images and Tom Petty of it all, we’re also filled with questions. Questions that probably won’t be answered for at least a good 18 months or so. No reason not to ask them now, though!
Here are six burning questions we have about GTA 6 after watching the trailer.
Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: No surprise that the trailer shows so much social media considering its rise as a cultural phenomenon since the last GTA game. We’re just wondering how it will all work in GTA 6.
Will we be able to watch clips of a TikTok-like app on our phones and tap them to like them, or will it run a little deeper than that? Maybe the open world will be filled with viral moments just waiting to be recorded as a new sort of collectible: see some weirdo twerking on the roof of a moving car or running naked from the cops, record them, post them, and earn likes and views for some sort of in-game clout? That’d be kind of fun, though it could also be a bit distracting. Stopping a bank heist getaway to film a Karen going ham with two hammers? Sounds dicey.
Can you play as that dude?
Tyler Wilde, Executive Editor: The trailer seems to establish Lucia as the main character. Her name is the first word we hear, and her face is the first we see. A little over halfway through, we’re introduced to her partner in crime, an unnamed dude who has her back in a series of stick-ups, and who seems more or less smitten with her. Because of last year’s big leak, we know his name is likely Jason, and that yes, he’s probably playable. The footage that leaked showed the player swapping between Lucia and Jason at will.
The next question, which we don’t have an answer to, is whether Jason is a supporting character and the story is essentially about Lucia, or if he and Lucia share the spotlight. It’s easy to picture the second trailer starting with Jason’s perspective, with Lucia joining his crime spree. GTA 5 featured three protagonists, and the ‘multiple perspectives on the same story’ device is a crime fiction staple. Lucia seems clearly to be the leader of the duo though, and I really can’t guess which way Rockstar has gone with it.
I do have a hunch, because I’ve seen movies before, that one of them is going to die. If you ask me, it’s not looking good for Jason. But maybe it’ll be a multiple endings scenario, where both can live, either can die, or they can go out together in a hail of bullets like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
What am I gonna buy?
Lauren Morton, Associate Editor: GTA 5 and GTA Online are all about amassing cash and dumping it into luxuries. There’s no doubt that sports cars and other vehicles will be one of the major cash sinks, with outfits and other gear coming close behind. I hope residential properties are also back on the call sheet. Here’s hoping they cook up something new for us to toss our ill-gotten gains at, though. I’m hoping that Lucia’s story is its own reward, of course, but if Rockstar wants me to spend years in another action game I’m still eager to find out what I’m really working towards.
Will superpowers return?
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: We’ve talked about how GTA 6 already seems to be more grounded or at least less fantastical than GTA 5, but I’m wondering if that means its protagonists won’t have superpowers anymore. Remember? Michael could trigger Red Dead deadeye, Trevor could be invincible during a murder streak, and Franklin had deadeye for cars. They were a little goofy and underutilized, but I enjoyed that each ability was linked to the character’s speciality and it gave me a real reason to swap between them in missions. Where will GTA 6 take this idea? Maybe Arthur’s upgradable stamina, health, and deadeye attributes in Red Dead Redemption 2 are a clue of what’s to come.
Is GTA 6 too modern for radio?
Morgan Park, Staff Writer: Serious question. If there’s one thing I’m clear on from GTA 6’s first 90-second trailer, it’s that modern-day Vice City will reflect our algorithmically informed media landscape. Will that extend to music? Because as much as I love GTA’s classic radio stations, it’d be far more believable for Lucia to throw on some earbuds and play a feed of “For You” songs that change every day. That’d mean you could finally continue listening to your song after getting out of a car, but admittedly, hearing the radio fade out as I flee a 10-car pileup is part of GTA’s charm.
How big is that map?
Chris Livingston, Senior Editor: Bigger isn’t always better, as Starfield recently proved, but is Rockstar’s fictionalized version of the state of Florida bigger than the already tremendously large San Andreas of GTA 5? It might be. It looks huge. It looks really huge.
And I probably shouldn’t say this, but… I hope it really is. I hope the map is disgustingly huge. I hope it’s pointlessly, needlessly, stupidly big. I’m usually in favor of games shrinking in size and focusing on quality over quantity, but not when it comes to GTA 6. I hope it takes forever to drive across that map. I hope I need to pull over to take a restroom break because I literally need to use the restroom. I hope it’s the biggest open world map we’ve ever seen. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
