Without any advance warning at all, we now have a second Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer. And it looks gorgeous.
Over the course of two minutes and 45 seconds, we meet the game’s protagonists, Jason and Lucia, and follow them around a version of Vice City that seems more immersive and vibrant than ever before.
Yes, a quick glance on the Reddit forum reveals a lot of fans frothing about the way Lucia’s bum moves (seems like the uncomfortable questions the game has previously thrown up about the way it treats women haven’t gone away yet).
But for every ass-centred comment, there is another celebrating a different element of the game’s insane attention to detail. One shot, in which a character is presumably watching TV with a bottle of beer, is zoomed in enough that you can see the individual tiny bubbles rising to the surface of the bottle.
That’s impressive – as is a later shot in which Lucia seems to be fighting somebody in the loading bay of a flying airplane. As somebody else points out in a comment, you can see the muscles moving in her arm – a pretty insane feat, given that this is not real-life, but carefully generated CGI. Or a shot which shows a cougar in a stream. The cougar’s fur is clearly wet on the underside of its belly and dry on top. Or a snap of Lucia in a pool... where the reflection of the buildings on the water is clearly visible. That’s really hard to do.
Even better, a note at this end points out that this was all shot on a PS5. While this is still a trailer (and therefore looks glossier than the playable product will), it’s fair to expect a similar level of detail will carry across to the game itself.
Also read: Did you spot all these Easter eggs in the new GTA 6 trailer?
All of which is to say: it’s clear that gamers are in for a treat when this finally launches, although the sheer size of the file may necessitate a console clear-out first.
Rockstar has form in creating these kinds of ultra-detailed products. When GTA V came out, it was years ahead of the curve in both its graphics and in the open-world playground of Los Santos, that people could roam around and explore at will.
Red Dead Redemption 2 offered even more of that: more detailed characters than ever before, combined with a landscape that let characters do everything from fish to catch and skin their own animals. All that, combined with one of the best storylines ever put to screen.
GTA 6 looks set to combine all the above and take it even further; hell, even the screenshots on the game’s website look breathtakingly beautiful. Much has already been said about the new technology they’ve developed for the game, but it’s worth recapping.
There’s advanced ray-tracing, which is par for the course when it comes to rendering realistic light these days. There’s a souped-up AI, which apparently will improve police chases and make it harder for drivers to evade capture – as well as the chance to interact more organically and reactively with the world (put simply, choices have more consequences, and NPCs will be smarter than ever before).
There’s also some pretty clever stuff at work when it comes to visuals too. The graphics themselves have been described as “truly next gen” and boast stuff like realistic weather (PCs will lose their balance in high wind, for example, and trees will move) as well as advanced car crash physics and post-crash debris.
Factor in Rockstar’s promise to add in more organic quests and more life to Vice City than ever before, and what you have looks like something very special indeed. As one person put it, “this is like God designing Earth! Everything everything has detail.” That it does – and though we have a way to go until May 26, 2026, it looks like the payoff will be worth it.
