The Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer Looks Fabulous But Brings Bad News

Over 10 years on from the release of its predecessor, we’re at last looking at a proper, official trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI.

In a minute and a half, we get an overview of GTA VI’s setting, which is a new version of Vice City - the franchise’s colourful approximation of Miami. Much like GTA V, whose San Andreas location gave us both a condensed recreation of Los Angeles along with a vast rural area, VI also looks to include a big expanse outside of city limits to explore. This will include an Everglades-like swampy part and an archipelago stretching into the Atlantic Ocean.

The story seems to focus on a female main protagonist (a GTA first) called Lucia, an ex-con who's gotten mixed back up in a life of crime after being released from prison, along with her unnamed partner. And so, it looks to be a typical and simple Bonnie and Clyde kind of affair, in contrast to GTA V’s complex approach with three playable protagonists with intertwining plotlines.

The story ties in with the trailer’s background music, Love Is A Long Road by Tom Petty. The only thing you’ll find in the YouTube video’s description is all the licensing stuff for that track, and at the time of writing, there was no press release to go along with the trailer.

That trailer came out 15 hours early due to a leak. “Our trailer has leaked so please watch the real thing on YouTube,” Rockstar Games said on X, formerly known as Twitter, on 4 December. 

The trailer features all the usual Grand Theft Auto staples - police chases, weird characters and a good dose of cynical humour. Commandeering boats and planes look to be part of it, and, of course, stealing and driving cars and motorcycles. Modern forms of social media seem to be part of the game, but it’s unclear how they’ll be integrated.

On the four-wheeled front, the cars look to have taken a further step towards the real deal without being so close as to worry about licensing headaches. In one scene we can see what looks very much like a Porsche 911 Cabriolet, plus a Ferrari 512TR/Testarossa-alike supercar, the latter being - very appropriately for the setting - finished in white.

And now for the bad news. Right at the end of the trailer, we’re told that GTA VI is “coming in 2025,” dashing previous hopes of a 2024 release window. So, having waited a decade for a GTA V follow-up, we’re going to be waiting a little longer. If we’re being optimistic, we could hope for that to be early 2025, meaning GTA VI might only be just over a year away. Cross those fingers.