The first GTA 6 trailer is two years old today so here’s what we’ve learnt since

It’s the two-year anniversary of GTA 6’s announcement so let’s reflect on the game’s journey and how much Rockstar has actually shared about it.

Technically, Rockstar Games announced GTA 6 in early 2022, but that was a simple blog post, with no proper info about the game or even a single screenshot.

GTA 6’s first substantial announcement came precisely two years ago today, with a short cinematic trailer confirming gorgeous looking graphics, the setting of Vice City, and criminal couple Lucia and Jason as dual protagonists.

Since then, the trailer has garnered over 269 million views on YouTube, making it the most popular trailer on the platform, overtaking the previous record holder for Avengers: Infinity War.

And yet for what’s widely considered the most anticipated video game of all time, Rockstar has been very reticent about GTA 6. So much so that after two years, it still feels like we barely know anything about the game.

What was confirmed in GTA 6 Trailer 1?

As we said, the initial trailer was our first real look at GTA 6, but it’s comprised entirely of cinematics. It’s not impossible that some gameplay has been snuck in there, but there are no obvious examples and certainly no demonstrations of someone actually playing it themselves.

The incredibly good graphics were even better than expected, which is all most people wanted to know at first. Not only has GTA 6 reportedly been in development since 2018 (per Bloomberg), but it’s the first entry to be made specifically for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, although as usual for Rockstar there’s no sign of a PC version yet.

While the trailer introduced us to GTA 6’s two main characters – a Bonnie and Clyde-esque pair of robbers – that was one of the few details to have leaked ahead of time, initially from a 2022 insider report on the game’s development.

The Vice City setting (which returns from 2002 game GTA: Vice City) wasn’t surprising either, as it had been leaked as part of the infamous 2022 hacking incident, which further corroborated Lucia and Jason’s roles as protagonists.

And while the trailer does set the tone of what to expect from GTA 6’s plot and the ways it will satirise current American culture (with plenty of references to Florida related memes), as well as confirming Lucia being in prison at the start of the game, it provides no concrete story details beyond her and Jason being petty thieves.

For as big a deal as that announcement trailer was, it was ultimately Rockstar officially confirming things most fans already knew, which only contributed to the intense demand for a second trailer.

 What was confirmed in GTA 6 Trailer 2?

The second GTA 6 trailer dropped in May, 17 months after the first one, to coincide with the unfortunate news that the game wouldn’t launch this year, and is instead aiming for a May 2026 window.

This trailer is longer than the first one and aside from explicitly confirming Jason’s name (it had leaked long beforehand), it introduced an extended cast of characters and included some scenes that could be actual gameplay.

Unfortunately, there is still no uncut, unambiguous gameplay, but the fact that you struggle to tell the difference between what’s in-engine gameplay and what’s a story cut scene is a testament to how good the graphics are.

And yet, once again, there are no explicit story details, with the video description only offering a very general synopsis of the plot.

‘Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them,’ it reads. ‘But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida – forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive.’

Rockstar’s website does share character biographies explaining their personalities and their relationships with one another. For instance, Jason is described as ex-army, now working for local drug runners, while Lucia is said to have been jailed for ‘fighting for her family’ and was only released thanks to ‘sheer luck,’ but it all remains awfully vague.

Instead, fans have been left to try and piece things together by combing every frame of the trailer. There are theories of a reputation system, the ability to buy property, a fishing minigame, and the return of GTA 5’s heists, but that’s all guess work and nothing’s been outright confirmed.

What else do we know about GTA 6?

Since the launch of that second trailer, there have only been two new bits of info and one of them was another delay. Last month, Rockstar admitted it would need to push GTA 6 back to November 6, 2026.

No reason was given aside from it simply needing extra time, although Rockstar can afford to take as long as it needs to. Not just because GTA 6 is a very important release it can’t risk messing up, but the company is still comfortably making loads of money off GTA 5 and GTA Online.

It has been claimed that GTA 6 is actually finished in terms of content and Rockstar is taking its time to optimise it, so as not to have a Cyperpunk 2077 scenario, which had such a disastrous launch that developer CD Projekt had to offer refunds.

The only new information comes, inadvertently, from a former Rockstar animator, who revealed the game will have a bike rental system. Although that’s hardly the most exciting piece of information you could hope to learn about the game.

Why is Rockstar being so secretive about GTA 6?

Secrecy of this level is nothing new in the games industry, but given how high expectations are for GTA 6, the simplest explanation for Rockstar’s lack of communication is that it doesn’t want to share any details until it’s 100% certain they’re ready to be shown.

Plus, considering how much info has already leaked online, Rockstar must be feeling extra protective about what gets shared and when. Perhaps simply, though, it doesn’t need to say anything, because it knows you’ll buy it anyway.

When is the next GTA 6 trailer?

So far, there’s nothing to indicate when a new GTA 6 trailer will drop. Perhaps something will be shown at The Game Awards 2025 next week, but considering Rockstar skipped both the 2023 and 2024 shows, it’s far more likely it will release the next trailer on its own time.

At the very least, there shouldn’t be another 17-month gap between trailers 2 and 3. If there were, then the third trailer wouldn’t come out till October 2026, which is just a month before GTA 6’s launch.

Then again, a third delay isn’t out of the question either. In May, Strauss Zelnick, CEO of publisher Take-Two Interactive, expressed confidence GTA 6 would launch by May 2026, but refused to rule out another delay, which of course wound up happening.

Some fans have gone to great lengths to try and predict when GTA 6 trailers would drop, but they’ve never been accurate. So, all you can do is be patient and wait for Rockstar to say something.

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

Comments


Add as preferred source