When Arthur Morgan contracts tuberculosis near the beginning of Red Dead Redemption 2, you're supposed to feel sad. Arthur's a good guy with a troubled past, and he's the hero of the story. Him getting a death sentence right at the start of his journey is all bad news, but from here on out I'll only be able to react to his increasingly labored coughing fits with disgust, because now I know actor Roger Clark was actually hacking up a phlegm-filled lung in real life while recording some of those scenes.

Asked by YouTuber and games journalist Cade Onder if Arthur Morgan's coughing fits were taxing on the actor's throat, Clark says those scenes were "not as bad as you'd think" because they were spread out over five years and "if ever there was a really bad coughing scene, we'd always save it for the end of the day." That's good, but it turns out there was some serious method acting going on beyond the scenes that will forever alter how I react to Arthur Morgan's illness.

"In five years, there's plenty of colds and there was a lot of data that we got that was pretty damn genuine," Clark says, confirming that he would purposefully record dialogue when he was sick with colds, lending an authenticity to those coughs that only a real-life viral infection could bring.

"I'd be like, 'hey, I got a cold, let me get in there," and they're like, 'OK' ... nice, good bit of phlegm."

Grossness aside, I have to say I admire Clark's work ethic. When I'm down and out, all I want to do is lay in bed and watch Seinfeld reruns, but Clark's first instinct is to think about making Arthur Morgan sound as convincingly sick as he possibly can. That commitment paid off in an incredibly absorbing performance, even if I'll be playing Red Dead Redemption 2 while wearing a medical mask from now on.

GTA 5 left Rockstar feeling "slightly nervous" about Red Dead Redemption 2 as devs worried fans "were going to be bored" by only having one protagonist to play as

It's been almost three years since we saw the first trailer for GTA 6, and Rockstar North's co-studio head has now revealed – perhaps unsurprisingly – that the game wasn't "fully formed" at that point. Despite that, though, the song used in it was a "mission statement" for what was to come.

The wait for GTA 6 has felt extremely long, with Rockstar's sparse marketing certainly not helping matters. Trailer 1 was all we had to go off for a long time, introducing us to Lucia and who would later be confirmed as Jason, the Vice City setting, and, uh, a 2025 release window. Yeah, that didn't age well, but the accompanying music – Tom Petty's 'Love is a Long Road' – really helped set the vibe for the game, and seemingly not just for the fans.

Speaking in a new interview with French outlet TroisCouleurs, Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson notes that when the team starts on a new game, they don't necessarily all have the same image in their heads of what it's going to look like. "It may be an image, often it is a song we rally around," he says.

As for Rockstar's process, "the first thing we always do, once we decide where we want to set the game, is we'll go there. And just feel it, and go out and just drive around," he says, adding that the devs will "take a ton of pictures, and soak as much of it up as we can and see what speaks to us and start to talk about it and share ideas about what we want to incorporate."

He continues: "So, I'd love to say that it was an image from here that was in our heads, but you're usually chasing something a little bit out of reach and then you see something, and choose a piece of music, and these two things start to work. The game starts to pull together these sorts of pieces."

Nelson then points to GTA 6 trailer 1. "With the first trailer for this game, the Tom Petty song [Love is a Long Road] was a real sort of mission statement," he explains. "You don't have the game fully formed, you have an idea of what it's going to be, but you really have to push hard to pull that together and so when this team is able to do that – and it's definitely made with everything that you've got, but it's the best of everything you've got at that point – it's put together in such a way that it helps be a bit of a guiding light of what it needs to feel like."

Looking back, it seems pretty obvious that GTA 6 wasn't "fully formed" at that point – after all, we're going to have been waiting for the best part of three years since then when we actually get to play it. What we saw even then though looked extremely good, and I suppose that's just what Nelson is talking about when he refers to it as "the best of everything you've got."

But the music choice was clever, too – the lyrics gave us a bit of a hint at what we might be able to expect from the story and Lucia and Jason's relationship, more than what was actually shown in the trailer itself. And, if this is something that Rockstar used as inspiration itself, it's only fitting that we were teased with the very same song.

GTA 6 boss says "there will always be things to satirize," but Rockstar has to "be careful about what we pick" because after 11 years of development "it could be gone, it could change, it could be dated."

Rockstar once worried that fans would find Red Dead Redemption 2 boring after spending time with GTA 5 and its trio of protagonists.

After years of primarily offering a singular protagonist for you to experience its in-game worlds through, Rockstar broke tradition by going with three for GTA 5 – giving you the option to swap between the trio as their narrative journeys intertwined with each other. Considering GTA 5 still sells millions of copies a year, I'd say it worked pretty well.

In fact, it almost worked too well, as Rockstar became nervous about moving on to Red Dead Redemption 2 and the singular cowboy it offered to you to play as.

Speaking to TroisCouleurs about GTA 6, Rockstar North co-lead Rob Nelson delves into the journey from GTA 5 to Red Dead Redemption 2, and how that's influenced where the developer is today.

"We always look back at the last games and think about how to evolve on them and move them forward," he says. "And so, with GTA 5 with three protagonists that were connected but individual in their own way, and then going to Red Dead Redemption 2, which was obviously Arthur’s story, we were slightly nervous people were going to be bored with just one protagonist.

"And we did have people ask, 'Are you going to be able to switch between members of the gang?' There were questions about that. I forgot about that until now. And you think about it, and you know, people speculate."

Looking back, Nelson says that it "feels funny now," because Arthur "worked as a character." Partly because Rockstar gave itself the space to "really drill into his journey." In fact, the way his story shifts depending on your choices left such an impact on the team that you can see some form of it in GTA 6.

"We wanted to take the depth that we were able to add into the world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and the ability to interact with the world in a much more significant way, but then also this sort of emotional connection that people end up having with Arthur," Nelson shares. "Is there a way that we bring that into GTA, and how could we do it? So, we had played around with different ideas; we knew we wanted to come back and continue playing with the idea of multiple protagonists.

"We thought about different options but ultimately wanted to try a duo, a partnership of some kind. If they're in relationship, or have the potential to be in [a] relationship, what does that feel like? So it's a couple, it's Bonnie and Clyde. And then as soon as we thought about it, it was obvious. It became the very clear choice for us and felt like something we had to try."

Considering that Rockstar was once worried about Red Dead Redemption 2 boring GTA 5 fans, you have got to say the outcome the team got wasn't bad at all, hm?

GTA 6 boss says "there will always be things to satirize," but Rockstar has to "be careful about what we pick" because after 11 years of development "it could be gone, it could change, it could be dated."

Rockstar North co-lead Rob Nelson says GTA 6 has been in development since 2015, so the developers have had to be "very careful" to ensure the ideas they ran with still feel relevant in 2026.

Grand Theft Auto has always managed to capture a moment in time. While the likes of GTA Vice City looked back to the era of 1980s Miami, the long-awaited GTA 6 is more like GTA 5 in reflecting contemporary times. Due to swelling development timelines, it can be challenging when something you're working on today might not release for another 10 years.

Speaking to French outlet TroisCouleurs, Nelson offers some insight into how Rockstar is trying to make GTA 6 feel immediately recognizable despite being in development since 2015.

As part of the interview, Nelson is asked if Rockstar devs keep an eye on the current news with an eye to implementing what they see into a future game – the COVID pandemic, for example.

In response, Nelson says "there will always be things to satirize," but there is a method to picking the right things to make fun of.

"We develop on very long cycles," he explains. "The game's been in development since 2015, so the idea is gestating for a long time. The majority of the team really started rolling on to it after Red Dead Redemption 2 released in 2018.

"We have to be very careful about what ideas we choose to put in there, because it can take a long time to figure out what our angle is on this. Because by the time we write it and cast it and shoot it, and implement it, whatever it is – it could be gone, it could change, it could be dated.

"And so we're always trying to think about whether something will stand the test of time. And so, you look at those things, and we only try to pick things if they work with the story we're trying to tell, in the world we're trying to tell it in. I think there will always be things to satirize, there are always ridiculous situations and behaviors that we can find, but we just have to be careful about what we pick."

From what we can see of GTA 6 so far, there's plenty of that on show already. In the GTA 6 Extended Look, we see that Vice City is no stranger to a streamer trying to capture the next viral moment on the streets, for example – something that's been around for years now, and will likely be around for years longer. We've also seen a fair few in-game TV ads, which is one of Rockstar's favorite ways to skewer capitalism.

We'll have to wait until GTA 6 releases on November 19 to see what else Rockstar makes fun of, though it's clear that the silliness of human nature has given developers ample wells of inspiration to draw from.

Rockstar boss says GTA 6 doesn't just let you easily walk around with guns because GTA 5's approach doesn't work "at this resolution."

GTA 6 isn't even out yet, but it's already causing a ruckus in real-life Miami-Dade as the county's sheriff and a commissioner oppose a reported pitch for a marketing deal that'd temporarily transform parts of the area into Vice City.

Late last month, it was reported (via The Miamian) that Miami-Dade County officials had approached GTA 6 maker Rockstar Games with a pitch deck proposing to turn locations such as the Miami International Airport, Metrorail stations, and other buildings into Vice City-themed attractions. At the time, Carlos Suarez, a spokesperson for the county's mayor Daniella Levine Cava, stated that "some conversations with Rockstar about potential opportunities around the launch of GTA 6" had happened, but "nothing has been formally agreed to or approved."

Well, regardless of whether Rockstar Games is actually interested in pursuing this idea, some Miami-Dade folks are directly opposed to it happening at all. A Republican Miami-Dade County commissioner, Juan Carlos Bermudez, and Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz have spoken out against the concept, with Bermudez stating that "we should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence."

Via WSVN, Bermudez claims he's "not against video games, but to go out and get a video game where – which glorifies not only our first responders getting shot, but also pedestrians and residents – it's nonsensical."

Republican sheriff Cordero-Stutz similarly points to GTA's crime-centric themes, adding: "At a time when law enforcement is working every day to reduce violent crime, prevent robberies and car thefts, combat drug trafficking, and build stronger relationships between our deputies and the communities we serve, I believe we need to seriously consider the message we send when our own government promotes a fictional identity centered around many of those same crimes."

Miami Herald reporter Doug Clark has also shared a letter sent to Mayor Levine Cava by Miami-Dade's clerk of the court Juan Fernandez-Barquin and the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida's chief judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan, in which they "respectfully request that all Miami-Dade County courthouses and court-related facilities be expressly excluded" from any potential marketing, branding, or promotion related to GTA 6.

"Each day, these facilities are places where victims seek justice, defendants answer to the law, witnesses participate in proceedings, families confront difficult circumstances, and judges, attorneys, court personnel, and law enforcement professionals carry out their constitutional and statutory responsibilities," the letter continues.

"The individuals who enter our courthouses are not characters in a fictional world. They are real people dealing with real consequences, sometimes involving violence, loss, family separation, criminal allegations, and other deeply personal and consequential matters. The solemnity and integrity of these proceedings must remain paramount."

Miami Herald also points out that the timing of sheriff Cordero-Stutz's opposition to this proposed marketing deal coincides with her and current mayor Levine Cava getting votes on the County Commission, specifically for competing funding proposals for the Sheriff's Office in the county's 2027 budget. Cordero-Stutz wants a 12% tax-funding increase, while Levine Cava is suggesting half of that at 6%. The same report notes that commissioner Bermudez is thought to be a potential candidate to replace the Democrat Levine Cava as mayor in 2028.

Again, it remains to be seen whether Rockstar Games takes up the marketing deal in the first place. As previously promised, it's fair to say that GTA 6's launch marketing is definitely now in full swing following the recent extended look, and we can likely expect that to continue as we get closer to its November release date.

Rockstar boss says "we'll see what people say" about GTA 6's controversial refueling system, but thinks it's so fast that "you can't complain."

In a move that could be considered extra immersive or just a tad annoying, GTA 6 will make you refuel and recharge your cars – something Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson appears to be aware may prove divisive.

GTA 6's fuel system appeared online ahead of Rockstar's schedule following the recent wave of gameplay video leaks and was immediately met with controversy. There were some hopes that the system seen in the leaks may have been outdated and removed from the final version of the game, but per a new video from content creator TGG (below) – who recently attended an early preview of the game at Rockstar North – it's still intact.

According to TGG, when you pull into a gas station in GTA 6, you can choose to repair your vehicle or refuel it. The latter triggers a short quick-time event, which he estimates lasts around 10 seconds, with an animation showing the refueling itself.

TGG reckons that, from what he saw, "fuel isn't really going to be an issue unless you're not thinking about what you're doing," but it could, admittedly, catch you out if you're trying to escape after a robbery and the car you decide to steal is low on fuel.

Interestingly, though, Rockstar lead Nelson seemingly acknowledges how controversial this may prove.

After TGG expressed his surprise that the devs incorporated the system at all, Nelson replies: "We'll see what people say. Do you think people are going to like it?"

Nelson also points out how speedy refueling actually is, potentially getting ahead of complaints about its intrusiveness: "Hey, that's pretty fast for a fill-up," he apparently said after filling up his car during the preview session. "You can't complain about that."

We'll just have to see how folks gel with the system when GTA 6 actually launches – I fear that, despite Nelson's confidence, some players may well still "complain about that" no matter how fast the refueling is.

GTA 6 will lock you out of story missions if you're too broke, so it's good to know the robbery mechanics have been massively expanded.

There are a lot of things we don't know about GTA 6, but arguably the biggest is what the heck the next generation of GTA Online is going to look like. Given how much money the online mode attached to GTA 5 makes, a follow-up seems inevitable. But how is Rockstar going to convince players who've spent over a decade investing time and money in the current GTA Online to move on to an all-new game?

You can count Chet Faliszek, a 12-year Valve veteran who wrote for the likes of Portal, Left 4 Dead, and the Half-Life 2 episodes, as among those trying to wrap their heads around the possibilities. "Are they just going to kill Grand Theft Auto 5?" he asks in a new YouTube short. "Is it just going to be one continuous thing that they move over and you get upgrades? Can you play it with either game? That would be crazy."

Technically, we don't even know for sure that GTA 6 Online will exist at all. Online features similar to those built alongside GTA 5 were outed as part of Rockstar's ongoing union dispute, but even if they were in development, there's no guarantee that they'll make it into the final game. Still, with the GTA 6 budget speculated to be in the billions, it's hard to imagine Rockstar or Take-Two turning their nose up at next-gen GTA Online bucks.

"What are they going to do?" Faliszek continues. "That's a mess. We can all look through recent history, without pointing fingers, and see some people who did it by just total replacements. We can see people who tried to win people over and when that didn't happen, shut down the other thing. It's really hard to move people off, because I think people don't understand. At this point, someone's bought Grand Theft Auto 5 for, like, 50 cents, and they're playing it online for free. And that's their world. What is Grand Theft Auto 6 going to bring us online that Grand Theft Auto 5 doesn't have?"

With a knowing look, Faliszek acknowledges the big thing GTA 6 Online might have. "We all know: better monetization, right?" he says. "That's going to be their big innovation. They're going to have to figure out how to get you over to better monetization. You're in charge of Rockstar. How do you move people over to Grand Theft Auto 6 Online? Cuz you're making billions in Grand Theft Auto 5 Online, so you want to make even more billions on 6. How do you do it?"

One thing that's at least close to certain about GTA 6 Online: it won't be there at launch. Rockstar hasn't offered a single official word about an online mode even now, with single-digit days remaining until GTA 6's launch. And the studio already set a precedent with GTA 5, where its online features were turned on weeks after the release date. We might have an even longer wait for GTA 6 Online, but either way, Faliszek thinks a delayed rollout is a smart move for Rockstar.

"I think this is why they're waiting to do it until after launch," he says. "They're just saying 'oh, no, we're doing single-player at first at launch.' Cuz they don't want that negativity around whatever they're going to do at launch. They just want you to buy the game and get in the ecosystem and then they'll figure it out. I think that's a smart move by them. They're just saying 'we know we're going to anger people no matter what we do. And we're thinking about really angering people. So, let's not do that yet.'"

GTA 6 isn't flashy for the sake of it – I'm impressed at how additive every new detail feels to gameplay.

GTA 6 won't let you progress through the story if you're too broke, which will force Jason and Lucia to make some cash from side jobs or other definitely legal endeavors.

If there's one thing the trailers and gameplay footage of GTA 6 have told us, it's that there's going to be a lot of robbing in it. Nearly every single piece of footage has featured Jason and Lucia holding someone up at gunpoint, getting cash and living large. Safe to say, it'll be a major part of the upcoming open-world game.

YouTuber TGG (via Twitter user Synthpotato) saw gameplay at Rockstar Games and went into detail about how the robbery system works. This includes word that every store in the game is able to be robbed, and that unlike the convenience store holdups found in GTA 5, there will be unique robberies depending on what type of store you are robbing, with factors like CCTV and hostages to be worried about. They also note that much of the robbery footage shown in the extended look was open-world footage rather than bespoke missions.

Perhaps more interestingly, they report that at some points in the game's story, you will be stopped from progressing until your bank account is full enough to access it, while there's no word for what reason you'll need the cash to even participate in the mission, you will not be able to keep the story going if you're broke.

But even with the lockout, it's pretty obvious there's going to be a ton of ways to make more money in GTA 6, with the robbery focus being an obvious way. However, we saw in the Netflix gameplay premiere that racing will be a major part of the game too, so if you feel a bit bad about robbing virtual stores all the time, you might be able to be a nicer person and just do illegal street races instead.

Take-Two's GTA 6 leak investigation is heating up as the publisher requests sealed subpoena to avoid tipping off leakers.

For all of Rockstar Games' technical prowess, the genius of Grand Theft Auto lies in the beautiful simplicity implied by its title: brazenly commit crimes, and have a good time doing it. Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to be an industry milestone for open world density and attention to detail, and what we've seen of GTA 6 so far is still pinned on that promise. It remains as strong a hook in 2026 as it was in 1997 watching pixels skid across a screen from a top-down perspective.

Rockstar's commitment to its criminal fantasy means it remains utterly unreplicable. As close as the likes of Volition Games' Saints Row or Sleeping Dogs from United Front Games have come, I always find myself describing them as 'like GTA but…' There's a purity to Grand Theft Auto's crime sandboxes – simply existing in the world (and causing havoc within it) is just as valid as following their crime caper storylines. Even when cutting about off-leash, building up Wanted meter and going wild with vehicles and weaponry, it feels like you're doing so in a convincing if exaggerated world.

It's here that GTA 6 is really taking Rockstar Games' promise to the next level, as Bonnie and Clyde-like couple Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval take us on a spree across the sweeping Leonida state – Rockstar's riff on Florida.

Grand by name…

Which isn't to say that GTA 6 isn't innovating. Far from it. Only a developer with such a storied history as Rockstar Games would have the knowledge and confidence to identify Grand Theft Auto's integral foundations and build on top of those. Rather than reinventing any element of GTA's mechanics from scratch for the sake of it, it feels like GTA 6 is interrogating the purpose of every design decision the studio has made until this point, with a commitment to taking them further without diluting the joy of chaos.

In fact, the recent deeper dive into GTA 6 puts the likes of Red Dead Redemption 2 into a new perspective. Cowboy outlaw Arthur Morgan's adventure is already one of the best open world games ever made, with an emotional story and a staggering amount of detail and little touches that bring the digital world to startling life – walk into the Saint Denis theater to take in an actual stage show that changes depending on day of the week; Arthur's hygiene can get seriously bad if you don't give him time to relax with a spongebath; and of course, horse testicles are affected by the weather. These are seriously impressive details, making RDR 2 easy to get lost in, but also many of these elements were easy to ignore as you followed Arthur's journey through to its end.

Now, after taking in the full GTA 6 extended look and getting to see the game in action across several missions and side-activities, RDR 2 feels like a training ground or precursor for the type of detail we're seeing across Leonida. The difference here is that most of those finer details aren't just for show, but have an impact on core gameplay while being so natural they avoid being intrusive or cumbersome.

There's a reason GTA 6's gameplay reveal kicked off with following Jason and Lucia into a violent police raid as a drug pickup goes south. The fidelity of the world is immediately striking as the pair stroll up to the shady establishment. The camera moves in and out of cinematic scenes fluidly as they make their way up many floors to complete the hand-off. Then, guns are drawn and the action explodes into motion – cops shooting lead before anyone has a chance to speak, bodies entangling and slamming through thin drywall.

Jason and Lucia are caught in the middle of this eruption, the camera swooping behind the player to allow for some third-person blasting with a smooth cover system. These mechanics are expected in a game like this. But for GTA, which has had floatier shooting in the past, the motion feels wonderfully refined and fluid. It's like watching Rockstar's attention to action detail, as seen in Red Dead Redemption 2's frontier west, get pulled right into the modern age, where maze-like apartment blocks hide danger around every corner.

Bag it up

Crucially, though, the duo aren't about to leave this drug lab without the bag they came to collect – they're not about to risk letting underworld kingpin Bobbie Ike down. They need to make the most of this chance to impress. Jason grabs it, shrugs it over his shoulder, and continues moving to take cover out in the hallway without breaking motion.

Here I have to admit: I have become obsessed with GTA 6's bags.

Money, usually illicitly obtained, has been one of GTA's arcadiest mechanics over the years. Each game's blip as your money counter rings up has become a universally understood shorthand, just like Pac-Man munching on a cherry. But, bags crammed with valuable loot – full of drugs, or money robbed at gunpoint from a cash register – promise to have a physical presence in GTA 6 rather than instantly being displayed within the UI.

I love how this realizes and deepens the relationship between players and money. In a game about being a criminal, having to pick up and stow a bag isn't just a visual differentiator, but a promise of a mission genuinely in progress with parameters that feel real. What's more natural and easy to understand than actually, physically completing a bag drop-off?

This physical nature to committing crimes has an affect on gameplay, as well. During one sequence, we see Lucia laden with bags as she has to shoot her way out of an abandoned building through gang members, blasting and reloading a shotgun one-handed because one arm is so full of goodies. In another, Lucia walks into a store to commit a quick robbery, using a mechanic to hold her pistol behind her back to delay causing alarm while walking in. NPCs throughout Leonida will seemingly react realistically to seeing such danger, and even take the law into their own hands in some cases. Moments later, Lucia sprints out of the store loot in hand, linking up with Jason on a motorbike as the two make their escape to literally secure their bag.

If GTA 6 is making loot more of a physical presence in its world, then where better for its next major evolution than by overhauling the crime caper's second major pillar as you scramble to secure those goods: the getaway?

Another GTA 6 mission we've seen revolves around showcasing how the series' classic Wanted loop has been iterated upon, having Jason and Lucia work as wheelmen on behalf of criminal fixer Brian Heder to help notorious bank robber Raul Bautista make a quick escape.

Wanted has always been a crucial system for giving the sandbox chaos stakes. The more crimes you commit, and the more brazen they are, the higher your Wanted level will soar. It's always been an incredibly intuitive system when it comes to pushing at the boundaries of what you can get away with in an open world. If you're more Wanted, the more police presence will be out to cuff you. This mechanic alone has formed the bulk of my late-night GTA playtime with friends. How long can you survive? Can you get that level all the way up, and then through canny criminal skill successfully make your escape?

GTA 6 has the biggest overhaul of the Wanted system I've seen from the series to date, adding new elements of nuance to evasion while tighter driving and shooting mechanics ground the fast-paced action. Every crime you commit as Jason and Lucia contributes to a criminal profile whether you're directly seen by the police or not, but once a crime has been committed, reported, and attracted attention these modern cops will be able to track your face, clothes, and car to pick up your trail.

While the mission has Lucia drive the crew down an alley to briefly lose their pursuers – which might be enough to lose them in earlier games – here it's only the quiet in the storm. It's not until they manage to ditch their car and torch it, moving to a discreet van, that escape is possible. But, crucially, the Wanted system remains active, merely switching from white stars to red stars. Sirens signal the police hunt is still on, and you'll need to be careful to remain incognito to throw off the police.

While similarly bombastic escapes were part of GTA 5's heists, and, admittedly, this takes place in a story mission, the impression is that these different layers will present throughout the Wanted system more broadly. Choosing to rob a store clerk and escape with a bag of loot isn't a success until you manage to actually get away safely. It's such an elegant loop that I'm surprised it's taken GTA this long to truly codify it within its standard mechanics.

GTA 6 will make keeping a low profile tougher, as well. Social media isn't just for show (though one character can doomscroll while the other drives) – it hints at a more lively network of observation that means NPCs will be taking more notice of what's going on around them, and aren't scared to get involved. One dicey gas station robbery has Jason and Lucia dodging gunfire from an understandably irate clerk. And, while the driving model seems much improved in GTA 6, that simply means a more realistic and grounded scale with tighter streets that can offer more challenge when it comes to deftly escaping behind the wheel.

While it seems you can dive into petty crime whenever you want, this scheming duo have their eyes on bigger prizes. The circumstances of Jason and Lucia's need to rise through the criminal ranks are still something of a mystery, but it's linked to a job gone south that saddled Lucia with jail time. Now, released from behind bars, the duo are feeling the pressure to grow beyond their small-time life of gas station robberies and store hold-ups. Like the alligators that crawl through the Leondia's Grassrivers swamps, we're in dangerous waters here.

Double trouble

There are still some secrets around quite how deep GTA 6's many systems will go. The extent of criminal profiling, for instance, is being kept under lock and key – but sounds like an evolution of RDR 2's honor system. Jason and Lucia's physiques can be affected by how much they snack or pump iron in the gym, but without a longer look at how the game's many side-activities feed into this, it's hard to say how big an impact it'll have on their criminal skills – but I'm betting it's not zero.

Likewise, while Jason and Lucia will always be a pair, how their relationship will grow, evolve, or even devolve, remains to be seen. One mysterious moment during character switching has the two connected with a love heart but with angry emoji, suggesting that for some reason they've had a falling out. Every main story mission so far handles the two being together so well that they almost seem incomplete when apart – they move through shootouts in tandem, covering one another to keep each other safe.

Similarly, in the narrative cutscenes we've seen the two are constantly chattering about their thoughts on dealing with these criminals safely. No one character is simply along for the ride like the Michael, Trevor, and Franklin trio often felt like in GTA 5, which it often revelled in. In GTA 6, 'partners in crime' is the name of the game, and something felt in every major mission that has been revealed so far.

It's in that final sequence we get more of a sense of how both Jason and Lucia can hand-off play in a single mission and feel distinct from one another. It sees the pair playing security for a rich man at an expensive party in a large office building at night, with the event being thrown into chaos when – Die Hard style – it's invaded by a gang looking for a major score.

Jason takes point in the emptier upper floors, where the game's gorgeous lighting really jumps out – the dark, sparse office dimly lit by desk lamps gets thrown into stark relief as bright white light floods from the elevators as enemies arrive. With guns, Jason is able to crouch around corners to ambush enemies, gunfire slowing when he uses his focus skill to slow time and line up devastating shots. This is a similar ability to Michael's in GTA 5, but here it also highlights red and yellow weak spots on enemies.

As Jason and Lucia text one another to share info – the message popping up on-screen – the action switches to Lucia, who has had her own guns confiscated. Here, she's involved in brutal melee with these attacking mercenaries, stabbing a man with a high-heel. We've also seen Lucia training at the gym and going Street Fighter mode with enemies in the open world. At least in this mission, Jason has a gunfire specialty while Lucia is thrust into close-quarters – though it remains to be seen how strict these roles will be in the wider game. Given the detail with which side-activities seem to reflect the pair's growth and condition in an RPG-like simulation style, I wouldn't be surprised if some of this comes down to how you play.

The deeper dive into GTA 6 has allayed my fears that Rockstar Games' sharp new details might come at the cost of simply having fun. But this is still a game in love with the fantasy of committing daring crimes and getting through by the skin of your teeth. What's blown me away is how many evolutions GTA 6 is packing that simply feel like natural additions. Of course Jason and Lucia feel best working together, like two characters becoming one. Of course I actually have to think about keeping my loot safe before I can bank it. Of course a new Wanted system breathes new, unpredictable life into tense chases through its detailed world. GTA 6 has so obviously become a milestone for the gaming industry for good reason – but, shocker, this tight design might also make for some of the smartest sequel decisions in a game ever from a design stand point. Of course.

Our GTA 6 guide details everything you need to know about the story, gameplay, and world so far! Or, check out our best GTA games list for what to play while you wait!

GTA 6, much like its predecessors, emphasizes player choice – and that's what has Rockstar Games most excited about its new Grand Theft Auto game, apparently.

Or, at least, Rob Nelson, current head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North, is. When asked what he's most proud of regarding GTA 6 by YouTuber TGG, he makes as much evident and explains just how choice-heavy the game truly is.

TGG has Nelson's full response transcribed over on Twitter, and boy does it make Rockstar's upcoming Grand Theft Auto sound massive… as if the GTA 6 extended look didn't do so enough already.

"The way the whole thing works together, we've got a lot of very complicated systems working in an interconnected way," Nelson says. "You can forget it's a game that has been designed to try and work this way. I think it allows you to sort of roleplay as heavily or as lightly as you want to."

So, in other words, it's wildly immersive on top of emphasizing player choice – the perfect recipe for a good GTA, if you ask me.

There's that "idea that you have a fair amount of choice now in terms of the way you can approach situations," as the Rockstar lead goes on to describe.

"You can still cause as much carnage as you can imagine. How does that make you feel if it has an impact on certain things? Do you still want to do it? Do you want to do it more? Do you want to do it less? Do you care at all? It's up to you and what matters to you."

GTA 6 is truly shaping up to be one of the most ambitious new games underway, it seems – if not the most ambitious, judging by Nelson's words here and everything else we've seen of the Rockstar project thus far.

As for its prospective online mode, though, TGG clarifies that the developers "didn't make any comment" on it… but something tells me that, when it presumably comes, it'll be as impressive as it is in GTA 5, and then some.

Take-Two's GTA 6 leak investigation is heating up as the publisher requests sealed subpoena to avoid tipping off leakers.

Rockstar North's co-studio head and head of development, Rob Nelson, has explained how and when players can switch between dual protagonists Jason and Lucia in GTA 6. He says there are some missions where you are forced to use a certain character, some where you are made to switch, and some where you can choose who to play as and change at will.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Nelson describes the team's design philosophy as it pertains to character switching and restriction. "Sometimes [switching characters] is limited by story progression," he explains.

"During the story, there are times where you can't switch from one character for some reason. There are some missions where you are free to switch as much as you want, but there are some sections where we want you to experience it from a certain character's perspective, like GTA 5, so we limit switching."

He goes on to explain how and why the devs limited players to Jason in a certain scene. "There is a mission that takes place in a high-rise apartment complex where you used to be able to switch freely between characters," Nelson says. "However, as ex-special forces, we thought it would be a more natural fit for Jason to be in control, so we decided to set the character. The mission is early in the game, so we thought it would be unnatural for Lucia to lead and give instructions as the two navigate the area."

Alternatively, he compares this to a mission where the player has to switch between Jason and Lucia. "There are some operations where you're forced to switch characters," he says. "In the trailer, we showed a mission where they left a bank robbery and drove away in a car. At first you control Jason firing at the police vehicles from inside the car, while Lucia is driving. Then, during the mission you switch characters, and this time the player is driving the car as Lucia, while Jason and Raul continue to fire at the cops from the back seat."

Finally, he explains parts where you can swap between the two characters whenever you want. "There are missions that are designed in this way, then, like the mission at the end of the trailer where they are under attack, there are times when you can freely alternate switching between Jason and Lucia," Nelson explains.

After 13 years, GTA 6's gameplay deep dive has been so worth the wait even my 76-year-old mother has been texting me about it

Rockstar has just released a massive pile of new GTA 6 screenshots, and even after seeing nearly 30 minutes of 4K gameplay last week, there are a few new details to pick apart in these stills. Sure, there are displays of cars, weapons, locations, and sick outfits for Jason and Lucia, but I keep coming back to this one picture of an iguana.

Seriously, if the image above does not fully communicate why I'm looking at this iguana so intensely, go check out the 4K original on Rockstar's official website. Zoom in, and start counting scales. Every single scale on this little (big) guy is fully visible, in sharp detail, from head to tail.

Of course, Rockstar is already known for ridiculously detailed animals, as Red Dead Redemption 2's horses are famously some of the most lovingly rendered creatures in gaming, right down to testicles that grow and shrink depending on the temperature. But that's a cowboy game – one where horses are central to the experience, as are all kinds of other little varmints you've gotta track, hunt, or avoid.

It wouldn't be out of pocket for us to see an iguana model this detailed if, say, this were a AAA game about keeping iguanas as pets. But this is a game about stealing cars and robbing banks. You'll probably look at one of these iguanas for a couple of seconds, tops. Rockstar might be the only studio in the world willing – and more importantly, able – to invest its resources into such minute details.

Maybe the iguana we're seeing here is a hero model that'll be front-and-center for a brief establishing shot in a cutscene or something. But there's still no reason for it to look this good. Other than, of course, Rockstar's desire to absolutely dazzle us with an uber-detailed sandbox.

GTA 6 became too realistic for even Rockstar so the devs had to cut a system for restocking Jason and Lucia's fridge to "find the right balance between realism and ease of play."

You probably don't need to be told that GTA 6 is big. Rockstar sandboxes are known for their size and depth, and this one seems like it'll be the biggest of the bunch by a wide margin. So much so, the studio doesn't think a single member of the team has seen every corner of Leonida.

Chatting about the blockbuster release with IGN, Rob Nelson, the head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar, spoke about the philosophy underpinning the map and all the various things you can do. "I think the challenge for us on this game is the same as it is on any new game for us," he explains.

"How do we evolve and build upon the good things we have done before in all the ways these things need to evolve," he adds, "but at the same time ensure that the game still has everything that made the previous games in this series resonate with people?"

That's a tricky thing to do. No doubt Rockstar wants GTA 6 to feel fresh and contemporary, without completely eschewing the ideas that have carried the series this far. Chaos, comedy, and constant pull to explore are hallmarks of the franchise, and have been since the very first entry.

That last part is key, and the team appears to have spent the 13 years since GTA 5 well in terms of providing us with things to do. "The game is so big, I don’t know that there’s anybody on the team that knows all of it," Nelson says.

Normally I'd balk at such a statement, but he's likely correct in this instance. Leonida seems big, and between just getting around and all the side-quests, I've little doubt there's an ungodly amount to see and do, to the point that it'll take hundreds to uncover all of it. And it all kicks off in November - at long last.

GTA 6 became too realistic for even Rockstar so the devs had to cut a system for restocking Jason and Lucia's fridge to "find the right balance between realism and ease of play"

GTA 6 had even more daily-life role-playing features, like buying groceries to restock your fridge, reveals Rockstar North co-studio head and head of development Rob Nelson, but the team decided to scrap the idea so as not to overcomplicate the game's mechanics.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, Nelson discusses a feature the team planned but eventually cut: dual protagonists Jason and Lucia could buy groceries at the supermarket and then restock their fridge.

"At one point during development, we were experimenting with a system that would allow you to buy groceries to restock the fridge," he says. "We had specifications for stores with groceries that you could buy and take home, and the fridge could be replenished. However, because this would have complicated the mechanics, we had to simplify it."

This would have likely been part of the GTA 6 system that allows you to gain weight, with your body, health, and stamina changing depending on how you eat and exercise. However, it appears the team thought shopping for groceries was a step too far, and opted instead for cleaner gameplay.

"We are always trying to find the right balance between realism and ease of play," Nelson explains. "Rather than just going to the fridge to grab a snack or visiting a restaurant just to roleplay, we want to give meaning to each action."

Seems living our TikTok ASMR restock fantasy is one of the only things we won't be able to do in GTA 6.

GTA 6 wanted system goes up to 6 stars and lets police track your face, your clothes, and your car

People were concerned about the quality of GTA 6's gameplay before the Netflix extended look, given the limited footage previously released. Now that those fears have been quashed, head of development and co-lead of Rockstar North Rob Nelson wants the next biggest concern, another release date delay, to be squashed as well.

In an interview with Famitsu that's been translated by GamesRadar+, the interviewer discusses how they no longer have concerns about the game's quality after watching the GTA 6 extended look that premiered on Netflix. However, the one thing they were still concerned about was whether the game would be released in November.

GTA 6 has seen two release date delays. The first was from 2025 to 2026, and the second GTA 6 delay moved the launch date six months from May 26 to November 19. However, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has remained firm on the November release date, reiterating his confidence in multiple interviews.

Nelson has now added his voice to the choir, certain that GTA 6 will come out in November. "It was our hope that people wouldn't be worried about the quality [after watching the extended look]," he says. "We're really pleased. Also, it will be released on time."

As it's expected to be the biggest game of all time, there is a lot of pressure weighing down on GTA 6 and Rockstar's shoulders. It seems that the studio is firm on its promise that we'll be able to dive into Vice City come November.

GTA 6 doesn't feature microtransactions or AI, Rockstar says, but I doubt its take on GTA Online won't have Shark Cards

GTA 6 hype is reaching a fever pitch after yesterday's big Netflix reveal, and it's seemingly making PS5 Pro consoles pretty hard to come by. In the wake of the GTA 6 extended look, most retailers have seemingly run out of stock of Sony's high-end machine, which has left third-party retailers eagerly selling it at exorbitant markups.

As I write this, you can still get a PS5 Pro console from PlayStation Direct for $899. But that seems to be the only major retailer in the US that currently has the console in stock, and I wouldn't count on the supply lasting much longer.

PS5 Pro is in stock at Amazon, but only at $1,299 from a third-party seller. The situation is the same at Walmart. It's out of stock altogether at Best Buy and Target. There's no way of telling if people are actually buying at these prices, but recent eBay listings tell the story – new consoles have been selling for as much as $1,200 there.

It's possible – likely, even – that Sony will replenish PS5 Pro stock for retailers ahead of GTA 6's actual release, but I guess this is the power of GTA 6. People want the best possible experience for Rockstar's next game, and they're apparently willing to pay a premium for it.

GTA 6 is confirmed to feature PS5 Pro enhancements, but we don't yet know what those improvements will look like. Certainly the game looked plenty impressive on the base PS5 during the extended look, and it's apparently unlikely to hit 60fps even on the Pro.

After 13 years, GTA 6's gameplay deep dive has been so worth the wait even my 76-year-old mother has been texting me about it.

We may not know much about Rockstar's plans for GTA Online in the wake of GTA 6, but the two worlds are already crossing over. The first character to make the jump from the crime MMO to the latest mainline installment is Valentina, revealed during the GTA 6 extended look showcase.

If you don't immediately recognize her, that might be because she was only a minor GTA Online character introduced to its universe in 2025, as part of the game's Money Fronts DLC.

In GTA Online, you only see Valentina in passing when you go to meet Mr. Faber, while she's telling someone on the phone she's around for just 24 hours.

Valentina seems to have a bigger role in GTA 6 based on the extended look we got, in which she gives Jason and Lucia jobs as bodyguards during a swanky event for Megamundo, a Spanish-language TV network. If she's handing out main missions, it's possible she'll be a recurring character in some capacity – though this is a big game, and you might not run into her often.

Fans have been comparing how Valentina looks in GTA Online versus her upgrade in the new mainline sequel, and it's quite the step up. Her features are considerably more defined, including around the birthmarks on her face. These minor details have long been where Rockstar truly shines as a studio.

I would consider her inclusion in Netflix's extended preview a harbinger of more reveals. Keep an eye on everyone you meet if you're hanging around GTA Online these days, because you might be about to see them get a serious glow-up, too.

GTA 6's criminal profile will track how heinous your crimes are, just like Red Dead Redemption 2's honor system.

We haven't gotten official word from Rockstar yet on GTA 6's frame rate, but if you're holding out for a 60fps mode, the prognosis is not looking good. A new tech analysis suggests that it would be uniquely challenging for even high-end PCs to run GTA 6 at 60fps – never mind current-gen consoles.

That's according to Digital Foundry, which has gone over the footage from GTA 6 extended look with its usual fine-tooth comb. They found that the game appears to be running at a native 1440p on base PS5, with a simple upscale to 4K. That's a damned impressive resolution target given GTA 6's visual fidelity, and, given the base console's limitations, it's downright astounding that the game manages to hold 30fps as well as it does.

It's impossible to do a full frame rate analysis given the limitations of Rockstar's upload of the extended look video, DF says, but the outlet has found that the footage indicates "a relatively stable and well-paced 30fps output, with only very occasional single frame drops."

The consistency of that frame rate output indicates that "Rockstar has clearly spent immense effort balancing CPU and GPU workloads to fully saturate the hardware. That makes a 60fps version extremely unlikely on console hardware." PS5 Pro could, in theory, throw more GPU power at the problem, but that's unlikely to improve performance by much when the game is so heavily focused on a densely detailed open world and vast crowd tech – two things that normally require more CPU power.

We know that GTA 6 will feature some enhancements on PS5 Pro, but Rockstar reportedly hasn't settled on whether any sort of performance mode will ever be introduced. High-end PC hardware has, of course, already well outclassed Sony's monster machine, and it sounds like even the theoretical PC port of GTA 6 would struggle to reach 60fps on all but the latest and greatest CPUs.

"The CPU demands of a world this complex – tuned around console Zen 2 cores at 30fps – could make hitting 60fps genuinely challenging in a way we don't often see," Digital Foundry says, "and will likely require a high-end CPU like a recent Ryzen X3D to avoid bottlenecks."

A stable 30fps would still be the best performance we've seen out of a mainline GTA game in decades, as GTA 4 and 5 both had consistent, severe frame rate dips when they originally launched on Xbox 360 and PS3. Standards have admittedly changed over the past decade, but I doubt a 30fps cap is going to dissuade too many GTA fans from picking up the long-awaited blockbuster.

GTA 6 is "Rockstar's magnum opus" according to "proud" devs excited about the Netflix extended look after two weeks of "heartbreaking" leaks.

Jason and Lucia are facing their toughest mission in GTA 6 so far: dinner with an older couple, Brian and Lori, at a rooftop restaurant with the unappetizing name of Effluvia. A job has come up that requires just one of them to step away, leaving the other to keep the conversation flowing between bowls of stuffed olives.

Jason turns to his partner. "I don't mind," he says. "If you wanted to…" But Lucia ignores his signals: "I'm gonna go." As she steps up to leave, Jason tilts toward her, halfway out of his seat. The subtext is clear: don't leave me here, with these people I barely know how to speak to.

Power couple

There's a lot of that in GTA 6, if Netflix's 26-minute reveal is anything to go by. There are plenty of noisy gunfights and screeching car tyres, but much of what we see of our two protagonists are the constant, quiet negotiations of life in partnership.

Early into the preview, Rockstar leans on the relatable clichés of heteronormative existence: a woman who clothes her boyfriend better than he could himself; a choice between two different dresses, which Jason fumbles; the restlessness of a man whose getting-ready routine is finished in five minutes flat, when faced with the intricate hair and makeup preparations expected of women.

But what follows is subtler and more powerful than that. Rockstar appears to understand that some of the most important conversations between couples happen in liminal spaces: the car on the way to the party; the elevator up to the rooftop bar. These are moments for team tactics - in which potential issues are raised, fears are voiced, and a shared approach is agreed upfront. Forget couple goals – these two have couple objectives, and they're being reassessed and renegotiated on the fly.

There are multiple points where Lucia reads Jason's discomfort in his body language, and pushes him to unpack what he's feeling. "Sometimes I'm just more comfortable when I have to use a gun," he admits. As many couples will attest, what you often need from your other half as you charge into the fray of a social event is simply a brief motivational speech – a pep-talk in ten words or less – and Lucia understands that too.

"Relationships are about communication, Jay," Lucia teases him with a laugh as he weaves between Vice City traffic. But it's not really a joke. There are two pairs of hands on this steering wheel, and each has the capacity to drive the other into the Bay. The gangster story may heighten the consequences of Lucia and Jason's decisions – a long jail sentence, or a bullet to the back of the head – but this joint responsibility is really the stuff of all serious relationships.

When Jason asks, "How do you wanna play it?", it's an acknowledgement that she has placed her life in his hands, and vice-city versa. Honoring that commitment means being open to discussion – the kind of private negotiations that all couples have as they find their way forward.

Rockstar has said that it'll be up to the player to decide how hard they lean into Jason and Lucia's romance over the course of the game. But it's clear that main missions will tug at their bond for dramatic effect. In a riff on Die Hard, Lucia is caught in a hostage situation while Jason plays the poltergeist upstairs, sending DIY bombs down the lift shaft.

The intermingled fear and relief is visible on Lucia's face as she hears Jason's voice crackling through the walkie-talkie – a dramatic irony the player gets to appreciate while the hostage-takers remain clueless. They don't realize they're dealing with a pincer movement from a pair of linked killers, who've developed a near-telepathic connection over countless evenings slumped together in front of the television.

Inevitably, that united front will break down, more overtly than it does in Effluvia. It's simply impossible that Rockstar won't pull that lever somewhere in GTA 6's second or third act. But even so, it's clear that this series is going to feel very different as a two-hander. GTA 5 had three protagonists, but they were tied by circumstance, greed and unfinished business. There was no way that Trevor, Michael, and Franklin made sense as a trio once the balaclavas came off.

By contrast, Jason and Lucia have chosen to tie their fates together – at least initially – and that means neither is a loose cannon in fake-Florida. Instead they're a pair of nunchucks, holding each other steady and reeling each other in as they fight to survive criminal existence. Thematically, if not mechanically, that's another kind of GTA entirely.

Rockstar is at pains to show that GTA 6 will host the kind of freedoms previous entries in the series have offered – base-jumping, motocross, swampy hovercraft rides. But my gut feeling is that this iteration will feel a little less free when its protagonists are apart. They are two halves, and must snap back together to be whole. Yet the consequent connection – to the characters, the story, the world – will be worth it. Every romantic relationship is a bet and a trade-off, and I'll bet on this one.

Our GTA 6 guide details everything you need to know about the story, gameplay, and world so far, while our Countdown to GTA 6 is packed with features covering the iconic series' past, present, and future!

We've finally had a lengthy look at GTA 6 gameplay for the first time during the Grand Theft Auto 6 extended look showcase. It's been a long time coming, as earlier trailers just set the game's (impeccable) mood with glimpses of the returning Vice City and wider Leonida state. Now, we've had big, uninterrupted chunks of gameplay showing criminal couple Jason and Lucia playing through missions, intercut with sizzle reels of side-activities.

GTA 6 is recognizably an evolution of earlier GTA games, but there are plenty of tweaks to familiar mechanics that are going to be transformative for the moment-to-moment experience. Similarly, fully new features alter how we think about our place in this criminal sandbox completely. Whether that's how integral Jason and Lucia's partnership feels through every sequence, or how the iconic Wanted system has had a serious overhaul, there's plenty to dig into as the Countdown to GTA 6 continues.

Read on to join me as I break down the 8 biggest gameplay features that will forever change how we play Grand Theft Auto going forward.

8. Two is better than three

On paper, having just two protagonists in Jason and Lucia might seem like a step down from GTA 5's Michael, Trevor, and Frankin trio. In fact, Rockstar Games did consider upping that to four for GTA 6. But, the choice to focus down is a smart one. What's striking about the couple from our extended look gameplay is how tightly they feed back into one another. They're constantly chatting back and forth about their criminal schemes, and when gunfire breaks out they smartly cover one another no matter who you're controlling.

One sequence has Lucia playing wheelman in a car chase as Jason shoots out the window; another has the pair fighting off enemies invading a millionaire's party, Jason shooting armed foes upstairs while Lucia has to use her fists down below, constantly trading off. Crucially, when apart, it feels a bit wrong – these two characters operate as a pair, and that's constantly felt in the gameplay design.

7. The Wanted system finally gets a detailed overhaul

Yeah, I love the arcade-like-rush of wreaking havoc and trying to survive maximum Wanted as much as the next person. But, with how detailed GTA worlds feel now, the system has started to feel a bit simplistic, creating some dissonance. That all changes in GTA 6, which is keeping the thrill of being Wanted while also adding more nuance to how it feels to escape, evade, and, ultimately, be profiled by Leonida state's boys in blue.

You'll need more than a quick spray paint on your car to throw off the cops. The six-star Wanted system escalates based on what you do, and how you make your escape, with the police force being able to track your face, clothes, and car as they hunt you down. In the gameplay showcase, we see Lucia have to torch a ride before swapping to a van, then carefully move through the city to avoid the still active sirens and Wanted meter (which turns from white to red). It's the kind of detail we saw in GTA 5's heists, now seemingly transitioned into a reactive system across the world. Even outside of being Wanted, every crime you commit will end up building up Jason and Lucia's criminal profile that defines their modus operandi – though there are still secrets around how this element will work.

6. Role-playing decisions affect your physique and well-being

GTA 6's RPG-style simulation elements pull from the promises of GTA: San Andreas and Red Dead Redemption 2, but with more nuance – like the aforementioned criminal profiles. Jason and Lucia will be able to get up to a mind-boggling number of activities across Leonida and Vice City, many of which will directly affect their physique, and potentially even their mood with one another. In one gameplay clip, we see the pair connected with a heart, but with angry emoji underneath them – a couple's spat, perhaps? – as Lucia basejumps and Jason shares a cold beer with the boys.

There's a physical element to this. Jason smoking cigars or munching on potato chips can have consequences, with it confirmed you will be able to get a little chubby (I've tested this in real life and it works). Likewise, we see Lucia lifting weights at a gym, and then beating the stuffing out of people on the street with just her fists. Another sequence playing as Jason allows us to press a button to hold hands with Lucia. Let's stay on her good side, maybe.

5. Detailed animations aren't just for show, but affect violence and thievery

Early in the extended look gameplay trailer I see Jason sling a bag of drugs over his shoulder as he and Lucia end up in the middle of a brutal police raid on a drug lab. It's a gorgeous animation that appears to happen in real-time, him slickly slipping it on. We saw similar details in Red Dead Redemption 2. But, importantly, moments like this aren't just for show in GTA 6, they permeate the entire gameplay showcase in ways that are important to gameplay.

Jason's mission to deliver these goods isn't a one-off. Bags of loot are scattered through the gameplay clips we've seen. The presence of actual goods to steal existing physically in the world is key. We see one sequence where Lucia is carrying so much she must use a shotgun one-handed, with a fantastic reload animation to match. In another, Lucia draws a pistol but holds it behind her back as she enters a store she's about to rob to avoid drawing alarm. Then, running out, with bags in tow, she leaps onto Jason's motorbike for the pair to make their escape. I love how this level of detail isn't just Rockstar Games showing off, but seems integral to play.

4. Extra layers to vehicle security makes hotwiring more nuanced

There's an odd moment in the GTA 6 gameplay showcase where Jason uses a slim jim to open a car window with a short QTE in order to successfully steal it. GTA fans like myself have suddenly realized how long we've taken the single-press car theft of earlier entries for granted. I have some reservations about this change, but I have to admit the more detailed security presents some interesting mechanical wrinkles that might be a lot of fun to play around with, making the streets of Leonida more immersive. After all, in the clip, Jason can still choose to smash the window if he chooses, so in some cases it may be a risk/reward choice depending on how brazen you can afford to be.

In GTA 6, Jason and Lucia will need to acquire specific tools in order to get into cars with different types of security. Nabbing an unsecured car will still be easy, but being forced to consider your next move when looking to quickly grab some wheels adds a brief tactical edge that could end up being more engaging than not having to think about it. The pair will have to make do with the tools they have when small-time, making the journey to bigger jobs with bigger scores something you actually feel while playing.

3. Car chases feel faster, dangerous, and crucially more grounded than ever

When behind the wheel, as well, I think I've taken GTA's car chases for granted in earlier games. While I can't say for sure until I play for myself, the driving model looks to be seriously improved from the last game even when cruising. And, when a car chase kicks off, either being hunted by the police or rival criminals, the tight camera really conveys a sense of speed. Whether driving yourself, or leaning out of the car to pop shots at pursuers, there's an electric sense of energy while the scale remains believable. Streets seem narrower and more real, so you'll need to actually be a solid wheelman if you want that responsibility.

Beyond criminal acts, we've gotten a glimpse at plenty of racing side-activities that seems to be a solid excuse to spotlight Rockstar Game's improvements in vehicle handling, as well as more leisurely pursuits like gliding through swamps on a boat. Moving through Leonida promises to be a serious treat.

2. Jason and Lucia's slick combat is a huge upgrade

Both gunplay and melee seem to be massively improved in GTA 6, much like its driving model. While both Jason and Lucia can do either, the gameplay showcase so far seems to position Jason as the gun expert with Lucia more of a bruiser. Whether these are specializations just for the showcase or something you can customize remains to be seen, but with how detailed roleplay aspects seem to be I wouldn't be surprised if that remains in your hands.

During a shootout in a dark office building at night, Jason takes cover in the shadows as he slickly pops out to deliver headshots (with killcams, naturally). Like in Max Payne 3, Red Dead Redemption, or Michael in GTA 5, he can slow time temporarily to aim focus shots – with the addition of highlighting enemy vulnerability points with red and yellow overlays. Lucia, meanwhile, stabs a man in the eye with her high heels in a QTE, but we also see her pumping iron at a gym and then fistfighting enemies, so she can handle herself well enough when not having to cover Jason with guns of her own.

1. Leonida is absolutely massive, and it can just as deadly as Jason and Lucia

Rockstar Games sandbox open world is big. Who would have guessed? But, I don't think I was prepared for both the sheer scale and density we've seen of GTA 6's Leonida so far. This is already looking so much bigger than GTA 5's Los Santos, and makes GTA: Vice City feel tiny in comparison (which is the last time we visited the Florida-inspired state). GTA 6's map is three times bigger than Red Dead Redemption 2's. A massive amount of side-activities reward exploration – kayaking, basketball, diving, clubbing, and way more (we counted 17 distinct activities in the gameplay showcase alone).

While Jason and Lucia seem more than capable of handling their journey through Leonida's criminal underbelly, they're far from overpowered – this is a world that can bite back. Outside of the police, robbing stores and gas stations will see citizens take the law into their own hands, and another sequence has the pair confronted by an angry woman with hammers (who also intrigued in the game's very first reveal). There's every chance this world could chew you up and spit you out, which makes the criminal fantasy all the more tantalizing to meet and master.

Our GTA 6 guide details everything you need to know about the story, gameplay, and world so far! Or, check out our best GTA games list for what to play while you wait!

The long, sometimes exhilarating, often exhausting road to GTA 6 has given us more twists and turns than the crime series' most memorable mission scripts. Now, just under three months from launch, it's finally within touching distance. We've now finally seen the bumper GTA 6 extended look showcase on Netflix. And we can now finally temper the omnipresent background noise and fix our gaze on November 19.

At least a little bit. Blocking out the external rabble, of course, has been a mission unto itself for literal years now. But if we take everything shown off during the 26-and-a-half-minute gameplay demonstration in isolation, powering through the next several weeks will be its own reward.

A sight to behold

Because, quite simply, GTA 6 in practice looks excellent. As I write this, in the immediate aftermath of one single watch-through of the larger-than-life mix of free-flowing gameplay, seamlessly transitioned cutscenes and staged set-pieces all captured on PS5, I'm fully aware I haven't taken everything in. Like you, I'll rewatch, again and again (on Netflix and latterly YouTube) and will then leave the subsequent, and inevitably enthralling, Easter egg hunt to the intrepid internet sleuths whose weird, wonderful and ever-meticulous discoveries will forever inspire. What I'll attempt to do right now is instead place this moment in time.

GTA 6 is huge. It's huge in spirit, in character and in detail; assertions that can now all be confidently made following a showcase that encompasses a botched drug deal, a post-bank robbery police chase and a millionaire's brutally ambushed party. My notes during these breakneck segments include: 'distinguishable arm hair', 'lifelike cellulite', 'brows slick with sweat', 'so many characters on screen' – scrawled shorthand that underlines how credible everything on show really is.

Between those set-pieces, flashes of domestic life outline thoughtful everyday exchanges between dual protagonists Lucia and Jason, and, better still, hint at just how big this world is.

There's a moment during the Extended Look where the pair leave their apartment, hop into a banged up-looking convertible and pull out of a car park into a busy thoroughfare. In that moment, Depeche Mode's 'People Are People' plays from the radio as the car's canvas roof retracts, and while it's not quite as iconic Tommy Vercetti revving up a scooter to the sound of 'Billy Jean' in the original Vice City, it's a stark reminder that we have a whole new Grand Theft Auto world with whole new possibilities to explore – for the first time in 13 years, no less.

This sense of scale and freedom is accentuated by snippets of Jason and Lucia shooting hoops, gliding through the Everglades, canoeing, swimming, tearing up nightclubs and rallying around Nascar circuits. Oh, and robbing a lot of commercial establishments at gunpoint. Switching characters prompts the familiar aerial zoom-in zoom-out system adopted by GTA 5 – and copied by the likes of Marvel's Spider-Man 2 – and duck-and-cover shootouts feel like GTA Online dialled up to 11. Which is, surely, the exact desired effect.

What I'm more enthralled by at this point, though, is the sophisticated interplay between the game's protagonists. Sure, this is but a snapshot of their relationship, but while GTA 5's trifecta of social class-spanning antiheroes are good fun, they're hardly what you'd describe as three-dimensional. GTA 4's Niko Bellic, in fact, was more well-rounded than Michael, Franklin, and Trevor, but I already want to learn more about Jason and Lucia as individuals and how they will operate as a team.

That longing for more will be my overarching feeling from hereon, but it's also one that's defined, and perhaps pervaded, GTA 6's path to this point in broader terms. I won't spend too much time addressing the most recent leaks but I do believe they're worth acknowledging in the wider context of the game's imminent release. Full disclosure: I was aware of them. I caught glimpses as they popped up on social media feeds and instant messaging chats over the last several days, but endeavored to by and large abstain knowing this Netflix offering was just around the corner.

I went into 'An Extended Look' relatively fresh, then, with wide eyes and an open mind. The latter, I can confirm, has since been assuredly blown. Because while it's been clear for some time the next venture of Rockstar's blockbuster open-world crime simulator series will be a generational tone-setter – something the leaks have inadvertently helped support – seeing it in motion, polished, pretty and, crucially, agonizingly close pre-release, is remarkable all the same. The leaks, then, are but another anecdote in what is surely one of the most intriguing game development stories in the history of video games, warts and all.

The recent leaks have been less than ideal. The source code leaks a few years back were less than ideal. News of the alleged union-busting practices behind the scenes on the road to release was less than ideal. But the very fact a video game gameplay preview has debuted on Netflix at all (albeit following on YouTube hours later) is a huge moment for video games.

Granted, this is a rich-in-resources series whose ads for previous online updates have dominated billboards in Times Square, and the 'coming soon' trailers that precede Marvel movies in cinema theatres, but this level of pre-release prestige is nevertheless worthy of admiration. These moments are transcendental, pushing video games firmly into the mainstream with a zeitgeist status that is, for me, up there with Fortnite's mid-pandemic Travis Scott concert, or going back a wee bit further, Lara Croft chugging Lucozade in British television adverts 30 years ago. The fact that my 76-year-old mother texted me 10 minutes after the showcase trailer dropped asking "have you seen the new GTA 6 on Netflix?" speaks volumes.

Love is a long, long road, crooned Tom Petty on the soundtrack of the first GTA 6 trailer at the very end of 2023. Now, closing in on one thousand days later with 281.4 million YouTube views in the bag since, the end of that road is now well within sight. How many times the latest GTA 6 Extended Look showcase will be viewed between now and November 19 remains to be seen, but enjoy this moment for everything it is: sometimes exhilarating, often exhausting; but also historic, both in Grand Theft Auto terms and the grand pantheon of video games more generally.

Our GTA 6 guide details everything you need to know about the story, gameplay, and world so far, while our Countdown to GTA 6 is packed with features covering the iconic series' past, present, and future!

Rockstar Games has reportedly shut down the idea that GTA 6 will feature microtransactions or use generative AI during its development.

On the Kinda Funny Gamecast, hosts Andy Cortez and Greg Miller share that they asked Rob Nelson – co-studio head at Rockstar North – whether there will be microtransactions in the game and whether generative AI was used during the development of GTA 6, with Nelson reportedly simply saying "no."

I have no doubts about the lack of generative AI used during development, but the lack of microtransactions is certainly interesting. It was revealed that GTA Online makes a staggering amount of almost $8 million per week, and that's undoubtedly thanks to Shark Card microtransactions for sale. It looks unlikely that GTA 6 Online will be available at launch, but this could imply that whatever the GTA 6 edition of GTA Online is could be a separate thing entirely.

We know for sure that GTA Online is on the way, thanks to court proceedings, but Rockstar has remained silent about what the GTA 6 edition of the Online mode will look like – not that it's been very talkative about the base game either, mind you. Although a later launch for an online mode isn't out of the ordinary for Rockstar, given that GTA 5 had a two-week wait before GTA Online launched, while Red Dead Redemption 2's Online mode launched in beta form a month later, with its full launch around a year and a half after launch.

I very much have my doubts we'll see a GTA 6 Online that doesn't feature microtransactions in some way, or a battle pass, or any other number of ways to monetize it for the next decade and a half. But at least we know it's not in the base game.

How long is GTA 6? About 80 hours, according to one Rockstar dev's playthrough.

If you've never been to the US, it might surprise you that the country isn't entirely made up of people in stars-and-stripes bikinis riding Harleys and twerking atop moving vehicles, alligators being fished from swimming pools, and grandmas dual-wielding sledgehammers. There's a lot of that stuff for sure, especially in Miami, Florida, which the GTA 6 setting Vice City is based on, but life in the country as a whole is a lot more nuanced and, frankly, less entertaining in general. That's why GTA is explicitly a satire, and a carefully considered one according to Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson.

"I think there's always stuff to satirize," Nelson tells IGN following GTA 6's deep-dive from Netflix. "As long as humans are humans, other humans will figure out ways to satirize what we do."

The stereotypes you see on TV, in movies, and playing games absolutely do exist here in the US, but they're usually local to different parts of the country. You'll see a very different episode of South Park, for example, if Trey Parker and Matt Stone are satirizing Portland, Oregon, compared to if they're making fun of Stigler, Oklahoma. Rockstar is picky about the parts of American life it pokes fun at, not only because of the intensely divided political and social climate enveloping the country, but because development cycles outlast a lot of topics that would otherwise be fun to satirize.

"For us, because we work on such a long development cycle, we have to not jump on stuff and instead choose our angle of approach carefully and decide what things are going to be a bit more timeless," Nelson says. "We're not a TV show coming out every week or every month. We have to be careful that what we're choosing to satirize is not going to feel dated in a weird way.

"I think those broader things are OK to satirize, but very specific political issues or memes will date fast. Even the way our characters speak we think about it a lot, so that they're not using extremely contemporary slang. Even though our characters are a certain age, they need to feel somewhat timeless."

GTA 6's hand-crafted NPCs have over 600,000 animations compared to only 55,000 animations in GTA 5

The level of visual detail in GTA 6 is staggering already, but there's going to be even more going on when you start interacting with all the NPC pedestrians that fill the world.

According to The New York Times, Rockstar said GTA 6 has well over 600,000 NPC animations compared to GTA 5's 55,000 and Red Dead Redemption 2's 300,000.

Judging from the recent GTA 6 extended look on Netflix, this will mean everyone you meet will move and react in different ways unique to them. And the only way Rockstar was able to pull this off was by dedicating an entire office in LA just to NPCs.

The goal was to make the world feel more bespoke and realistic. You won't be driving past crowds that mimic the same behavior as the people chilling on the beach. Everyone will have their own personality that will direct what they do—which might even include firing back at you if you threaten them.

Rockstar gave an example of an NPC dropping an object and immediately ignoring it in GTA 5. In GTA 6, NPCs will remember that kind of stuff because they're all hand-crafted rather than procedurally generated.

Co-studio head at Rockstar North Aaron Garbut explained how NPCs you encounter will materially exist in the world. "Every room in the game, somebody thought about this," he said. "Who's sitting where, what they're drinking, the marks that are left on the table. The pictures on the wall will have people that are in that room, with their tattoos on their arms and their family behind them. The whole thing has been made, and build, and photographed, and placed in this random room in a random building in a huge city, in a world."

All of this has me eager to pull an AnyAustin and follow NPCs around when the full game is out in November. I'm sure the main story will have its thrills, but I need to know what life is like in Leonida as the people who actually live there, not some shmuck like me who just showed up to cause some chaos.

The GTA 6 map is 3 times bigger than Red Dead Redemption 2's

GTA 6 aims to offer you plenty of freedom in getting up to various criminal shenanigans, but it's also built to tell a grounded story about two – presumably – sympathetic figures in Jason and Lucia. It seems Rockstar plans to address that the same way it did in Red Dead Redemption 2, as that game's honor system has evolved into GTA 6's criminal profile.

"This is a story about a couple on the run. We have tried to make the systems and the design support our narrative when and wherever possible," Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson tells IGN. "Meaning, if you hit and run, commit a crime and run, get into trouble and move on before the cops get there, and you don’t start shooting people, don't start escalating – which you absolutely can do if you want to – but if you don't, you're generally going to be fine."

In Red Dead Redemption 2, the honor system tracks all kinds of minor actions, from doing chores around camp to killing animals without skinning them, and those actions slowly add up to a score that determines your overall moral alignment. The honor score affects things like shop discounts, but it can also give you different cutscenes and bits of dialog in key parts of the story.

Rockstar hasn't spelled out what the consequences will be for managing your criminal profile in GTA 6 one way or another – I imagine it's trying to preserve that as a surprise for when the game actually launches. But it sounds like, if you choose to constantly escalate the violence, the game will start pushing back.

"If you're doing things on mission that you are required to do – or you’re robbing places, or somebody comes and messes with you and you have to deal with them by smacking them down or whatever – that’s all fair game," Nelson says. "It's when you go beyond what is necessary on a consistent basis, or you do completely unnecessary stuff consistently, that you may start to sway your criminal profile in a certain direction."

That plays into an effort to ensure you're not as "overpowered" in GTA 6 as in previous games. "You are still powerful and capable," Nelson says, "but you are not the only one capable of violence or the only one with weapons or the only crazy person out there. It makes the world far more unpredictable and interesting."

Check out everything you might've missed from the GTA 6 extended look.

Anyone who knows anything about anything knows GTA 6 is going to be a huge game. It's likely the most expensive video game ever made and is expected to be the biggest launch in entertainment history, but until now it wasn't known exactly how big it is, in terms of map size. Well, we have a rough estimate now, and it's even more expansive than anyone could have predicted.

Accompanying today's GTA 6 extended look from Netflix is a write-up from the New York Times (paywalled) in which, for the first time, Rockstar gives a pretty definitive confirmation of the game's map size: it's three times bigger than the one in Red Dead Redemption 2, folks.

If you've played Red Dead Redemption 2 for any length of time, you'll know its map feels nearly limitless and surprisingly dense for its size. To imagine something three times that size, and presumably with Rockstar's level of attention to detail, is genuinely daunting.

Of course, there are much bigger video game maps that exist already if we're talking pure square mileage – No Man's Sky and The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall come to mind immediately – but they're built by procedural generation with tons of empty space in between major hubs, whereas GTA 6's map, taking place in a satirized and fictional version of Miami, Florida, looks incredibly dense and packed with things to do and systems to interact with.

Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson has said the game feels like "a whole other world" with "a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we're not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well," adding that, "If you take a bit of time and explore you will be rewarded – a lot."

GTA 6 sounds like it's going to consume me, frankly, because I'm the type of open-world game enjoyer who needs to explore every nook and cranny to feel like I'm really getting my money's worth, so to say.

That said, Nelson's playthrough of the main campaign took him about 80 hours, which isn't too bad. It sounds like if you stick to the critical path you can beat the game in a somewhat reasonable amount of time, at least when we're talking about open-world games.

Rockstar considered giving GTA 6 four protagonists before deciding it would suck: "We worried about diluting the amount of player time with each"

You probably could've guessed this part: GTA 6 will bring back the series' wanted system. You'll still build up stars as police try to take you down ever more aggressively, but Rockstar's making some notable tweaks to the system in order to encourage players to play in different ways.

"The wanted system in GTA 6 requires that someone witness the crime, or an alarm needs to be set off for it to be reported to the law," Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson tells IGN. "One star is not going to be too difficult to get away from. You can see with these little icons on-screen, the police know what we're driving, so we should just jump out of the vehicle. They also know we're a couple. You could split up, and that will also help lower the police’s perception of you."

We see this demonstrated in the GTA 6 extended look, where a story mission has Jason and Lucia driving a client away from a group of very persistent cops. Here, we see that the wanted level can go up to six stars – GTA 5 had previously been capped at five stars.

Just below that, we see four icons representing how much the police recognize about Jason and Lucia: their clothes, their faces, their car, and the fact that they're together. Later in the mission, they break direct contact with the cops, turning four white wanted stars into four red ones, presumably indicating that the police are still hunting you but are not in active pursuit. They swap vehicles, removing the car icon from the screen, and watch a cop car that doesn't recognize the new vehicle roll right on by.

"We put a lot of work into how you can navigate the world, trying to make everything as smooth as possible to really encourage this type of gameplay where you are running and getting out of the car, jumping and climbing fences," Nelson says. "If you get three stars in the city, it can sometimes be challenging to get away in a vehicle, unless it's a very fast vehicle or a sports bike. Your best option is usually to do this – get off the streets and get on foot into the alleys."

How long is GTA 6? About 80 hours, according to one Rockstar dev's playthrough.

Since its last Grand Theft Auto game featured three playable protagonists, Rockstar wondered if its next one should offer the same, or better – four playable protagonists. But the developer seems to have quickly decided that would be an awful fate for GTA 6.

Co-studio head Rob Nelson explains to IGN, "After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of – do we do more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now? But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each and therefore player connection with those characters."

Finally, "we decided to step in this direction of two characters in a relationship," says Nelson. The GTA 6 extended look that premiered on Netflix gave us a better understanding of that relationship, the sometimes tense partnership between criminals Lucia and Jason – who are impossible to break up, even if you try. The two are soulmates in breaking the law... though, depending on how you play, they may not be perfectly suited to each other in other parts of life.

It depends on how much you engage with GTA 6's romance, which Rockstar seems eager for players to experience. Nelson says, "Chemistry is a notoriously hard thing to do in any sort of entertainment. Either the characters and the actors that embody them have it – or they don't. Everyone involved worked at that pretty hard. I think we've got it.

"I think we've got enough reaction within our team internally to where [Lucia and Jason] feel great as individuals and together," the studio lead says.

That last point is important – there's time in GTA 6 for getting to know both Lucia and Jason as people, not only as a romantic unit. With as many as four protagonists, you'd be juggling an unforgiving social calendar.

Nelson says, "As the narrative unfolds, we're quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character." Good thing Lucia and Jason aren't part of a throuple.

Like Red Dead Redemption 2, GTA 6 is "a whole other world" where "there's a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently."

A playthrough of GTA 6 could last you around 80 hours, if one Rockstar developer's fairly recent playthrough is any indication

Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson spoke to the New York Times about the making of GTA 6. One key detail is casually slipped into the report: Nelson played through GTA 6 in February 2026, and it took him 80 hours.

Nelson's run evidently covered the main story and "some optional goals with narrative ramifications," the New York Times explains. Focusing more on side content would surely grow that playtime considerably, with Rockstar promising greater depth and detail than any of its previous games.

Staggeringly, Rockstar says GTA 6's map is three times larger than Red Dead Redemption 2, already regarded as one of the most ambitious open-world games of all time.

"I hope that there will be people that want to get up, have a cup of coffee, shower, get dressed, go out for a little exercise," Nelson says, digging into the activities and routines available to protagonists Jason and Lucia.

"Here I am eating an apple, opening the fridge and drinking a smoothie," he says. "So this will increase my health temporarily for a while, allowing people to sort of role-play.”

If you do get invested in this personalization and micro behaviors, GTA 6 may well last you hundreds of hours at base, before even getting into post-launch updates and online content. We can only speculate on the true depth of the game, but the GTA 6 extended look live reveal and the ensuing information salvo – like NPC interactions also going considerably further than Red Dead Redemption 2 – points to a considerably richer game.

GTA 6 players won't be as "overpowered" as previous games: "You are not the only one capable of violence."

GTA 6 finally got its big (and official) extended look on Netflix today, giving fans their most indulgent preview yet of Rockstar's upcoming open-world behemoth. A bunch of different locations, gameplay systems, and characters were showcased, previewing what's sure to be a sprawling adventure jam-packed with unintended interactions, moving the benchmark for open world interactivity even further than what Red Dead Redemption 2 achieved back in 2018.

According to Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson, you'd do well to explore every inch of GTA 6's huge map. "There is a whole other world in Red Dead Redemption 2, yes. GTA 6 is very much like that," Nelson tells IGN. "There's a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we're not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well. If you take a bit of time and explore you will be rewarded – a lot.

"It's a big map, a very big map."

It being the most expensive game ever made, GTA 6 is expected to push boundaries in pretty much every way, from emergent gameplay to raw visuals to systems interactivity. In fact, Nelson says it's so expansive that no one at Rockstar has yet to really experience the whole thing, less than three months to launch. "The game is so big, I don't know that there's anybody on the team that knows all of it."

GTA 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X on November 19.

Rockstar lead says GTA 6 takes NPC interactions "much further" than Red Dead Redemption 2, and its system is "returning and evolved"

The GTA 6 extended look live reveal made a point of emphasizing how dual protagonists Jason and Lucia can engage with NPCs in a range of ways, both verbally and physically. Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson says NPC interactions have evolved considerably, with GTA 6 standing on the shoulders of Red Dead Redemption 2 in many ways.

Speaking with IGN, Nelson says "we pushed interaction with NPCs as far as we could for Red Dead Redemption 2" but GTA 6s "taking it much further."

"The team has done an incredible job to create all of this crazy dialogue, and you can stand there and listen to them, but we’ve tried to find a balance where if you stand too close to a group, they should notice that you're eavesdropping," he says.

This type of reactivity was seeded in Red Dead Redemption 2, Nelson explains, tracing Rockstar Games' history. If you get too close to NPCs or linger for too long, they may notice you, "be aggressive," or simply "want to get away from you."

"When we first started these ideas back on Red Dead Redemption 2, we thought if we could get it working there in a more sparsely populated world, we imagined what it might feel like at scale in a modern world," Nelson says.

We see examples of NPC interaction and reaction throughout the big GTA 6 reveal. Jason can praise, scold, pet, or study a dog found in what looks like a drug house – a useful demonstration of a left trigger-based system for referencing interact options. Later, after Lucia puts on a mask and pulls a gun while heading into a story, two nearby NPCs nervously but quietly walk away from the scene of the impending crime.

"In Red Dead Redemption 1 and GTA 5 there were basic systems for interacting, but the interactions were very simple," adds Nelson. "But with Red Dead Redemption 2, we were finally able to incorporate the ability to interact with NPCs as a more fleshed-out system."

For GTA 6, Rockstar has more than doubled in size since Red Dead Redemption 2, and has an entire Los Angeles branch dedicated to realistic NPCs.

GTA 6 is led by its very own Bonnie and Clyde, the beautiful pair of killers Lucia and Jason, but you should never worry about how great you are at sharing your love language while keeping the pair happy and coated in gunpowder. There's no way for them to break up, Rockstar says.

"They will remain partners in crime," co-studio lead Rob Nelson tells IGN about Lucia and Jason. "You will always have the benefit of working together and having each other's back – whether they're romantically close or not doesn't change that. They will still work together."

"It's really about what you want for them," Nelson continues, "their story, and how it plays out. Whether you've nurtured the relationship or not will definitely have a bearing on how their story plays out." The GTA 6 extended look that premiered on Netflix shows Lucia and Jason in harmony, for the most part, with the two changing outfits in Lucia's pink bedroom, riding side-by-side in a fast car, and sauntering into drug busts together. When the situation gets violent, they seem in step with each other about how many Molotov cocktails to throw.

But Lucia and Jason sometimes seem to scrape against each other even during these mundane – for them – couple activities. When Lucia presents Jason with a fresh, black shopping bag, he reminds her with a touch of irritation, "I can buy my own clothes, you know." Later, she chastises him for being withholding, saying, "Relationships are about communication, Jay."

So while Nelson tells IGN that how much you engage with GTA 6's romance is completely "up to you," the game's tone seems to depend on your willingness to be a lovebird.

"It really adds a compelling element to things," Nelson says about romance, "and it’s one of the reasons we wanted to approach this sort of story, because it's completely different for us. Could we bring some sort of emotional resonance to GTA for people if they wanted to engage with it? Could we also provide mechanisms for people to just opt out of it if they're not into it?" No matter what you choose, you won't be penalized. Remember, Lucia and Jason are together forever – even if you accidentally hit Jason with a stiletto heel and cry about how you always knew he was like your father (I'm guessing).

It's just nicer to be nice. "When you bring them together, it feels like you're a steward of their relationship, and you feel protective of them as a unit," says Nelson. "This is something we did not know when we started, and it really had to be something we felt our way through."

"Whether you’re getting in trouble, or you're running from the cops, or getting in a car, or waiting for the other one – playing as them together feels very cool," Nelson continues. "It feels like you're taking care of them, if that's something you're into."

New GTA 6 activities, customization, and gameplay details revealed alongside 63 gorgeous screenshots.

The titular Grand Theft Auto hasn't gone missing in GTA 6, but Rockstar aims to bring more nuance to the carjacking gameplay this time around.

In the GTA 6 extended look, we see Jason given a couple of options for how to steal a car in GTA 6. Walking up to the door, two button prompts appear on screen: you can either tap circle to smash the window and bust in just like in older GTA titles, or you can hit triangle to employ a slim jim and get in more quietly. The latter option involves a very brief minigame with the right stick.

It sounds like the slim jim won't be the only piece of carjacking equipment you'll pick up over the course of the game, either. "We have put some layers of stratification into the vehicles,” Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson tells IGN. “Previously, you could just press triangle to automatically hotwire and steal any vehicle that you wanted and take off. We felt like that left a lot of potential gameplay on the table in terms of progression and decision-making for players."

As Nelson explains, "you start off the game and there are certain parked cars that are not accessible to you until you get a bit further along with the story and you acquire certain tools to get into them."

That's a substantial departure from previous GTA games, where you were more or less free to jack any vehicle you come across the instant you see it, whether it's an old beater or an exotic performance car. Of course, you do have one recourse to grab those high-end GTA 6 cars from the start of the game: just find somebody already driving one. "You can always carjack any driver you see," Nelson says.

There's also now a phone app that gives you additional details on cars you may want to steal. "For example, it tells me this car is locked, it's got an alarm, and has no tracker," Nelson says. "It also tells me how much it’s worth if I go to take it to a Pay n' Spray or a specialty car fence, and how much it would cost for me to register it for myself. So, for example, this car needs a key cloner. This other car will just need a Slim Jim. So we've added a lot of fun little tools you need or mechanics you need to perform these formerly binary actions."

Here's everything you need to know about all the GTA 6 versions out there.

GTA 6 leaker Cyberleek looks to have retreated after squeezing $250,000 out of the crypto market using unofficial clips of Rockstar's game.

Per Kotaku, GTA Forum sleuth Vice Cit has been investigating Cyberleek's crypto activity and recently reported that the leaker transferred about $250,000 into different separate wallets across four transactions on August 27.

"This isn't the 2022 leak, this has been planned out and executed very intentionally to maximize the money they'll make from this," Vice Cit writes.

The financial mechanisms employed differ slightly to an archetypal crypto rug pull – here, 270 million reserve coins were seemingly burned to stoke trader trust and let the coin continue accruing transaction fees, rather than selling them off before the value tanks – but the end result is a pump and dump nevertheless, with Cyberleek looking to get out while the gettin' is still good.

"This was definitely done to give crypto whales more confidence in actually trading the coin and contributed to the coin exploding in price and market cap over the last few days. Instead of rug pulling the coin CyberLeek opted to make their money from transaction fees from people buying and selling the coin," explains Vice Cit.

From day one, the person or group behind Cyberleek has used GTA 6 leaks as vehicles to promote its own crypto coin through QR codes and watermarked links. With the value of that coin now embedded in the dirt after freefall, there's no reason to keep up the grift.

The most recent GTA 6 leak clip saw over four minutes of the prologue story for female protagonist Lucia spill online. It came with Cyberleek's loudest, most desperate plea yet: "Trading volume price is how CL measures your support. CL will not continue without support. You decide."

It's perhaps no coincidence that this apparent cashout has come as everyone is wondering how to watch the GTA 6 extended look today. It's possible Cyberleek just saw the writing on the wall, began to fear being uncovered as Take-Two ramps up investigations into the leaks, or anticipated a decline in interest and trading volume as Rockstar's Netflix reveal steers the conversation away from leaks.

I wouldn't be surprised if Cyberleek, who increasingly appears to have limited access to a non-standard build of GTA 6, springs one last leak right on the heels of the Netflix show in pursuit of imagined internet clout. But if this really is the end, it's as dumb as the whole leak saga.

GTA 6 extended look live coverage – All the news as it happens from Netflix's deep dive stream.

After more than a week of nonstop leaks, we're finally getting our first, real official look at GTA 6 gameplay later today. GTA 6: An Extended Look will soon debut on Netflix, and ahead of the broadcast, the streaming giant has revealed both the runtime and a few details about its content.

The Netflix page for the GTA 6 debut was recently updated to confirm that the event is 26 minutes long. "Captured entirely from in-game footage on PlayStation 5, this extended look at the next Grand Theft Auto showcases the biggest, most immersive evolution of the series yet," a press release adds.

Given PlayStation's apparent involvement in GTA 6's marketing, it's no surprise that the PS5 will be front-and-center here. But it is notable that the word "Pro" is nowhere to be found here. The PlayStation Store page for GTA 6 notes that the game is "PS5 Pro Enhanced," but we've yet to see any details on what those enhancements will look like. I'm glad the bulk of the show will seemingly demonstrate the experience base PS5 users can expect, but I also really want to know what the Pro enhancements will be.

Either way, this probably won't be a true first look at gameplay for many people eagerly awaiting GTA 6. Rockstar says the leaks have been "heartbreaking" for the devs, and while it's tough to sympathize with a faceless game studio – especially one currently embroiled in a messy union dispute – it's equally tough to find much love for a leaker pushing transparent crypto scams and $165,000 ad-buying opportunities.

Later today, at long last, we're getting a proper look at GTA 6 – albeit one that'll be stuck behind a temporary Netflix pay gate, which is an issue all on its own. It'll officially be released on YouTube six hours later, but if you're impatient, something tells me the leaks out of the public Netflix feed will be pretty tough to plug, too.

Join us for the full countdown to GTA 6.

It was 1997. The UK was on a high. The general election that year had brought about the end of a Conservative government and the beginning of what was said to be a new era. British music was thriving to the point that a fresh movement – Britpop – had been created, with the UK even winning the Eurovision Song Contest. JK Rowling released the first of her Harry Potter novels, The Philosopher's Stone. The phrase 'Cool Britannia' may have become rather tiresome, with The Economist saying the following year that the public had grown sick of it, but it sure encapsulated the mood of the time.

Gaming formed part of this British creative wave. WipEout was enthralling clubgoers, boys were lusting after Lara and, fresh from releasing the classic Lemmings, DMA Design was sensing a change in the way games were being perceived. Dave Jones, DMA's co-founder, felt gaming should tap into the wider world of entertainment. He wanted people with an interest in film, music, books and a broader sense of popular culture to play. More than that, DMA wanted people to forget that they were playing a game and immerse themselves into an environment instead.

The DMA team cracked on with a city simulator. Programmer Mike Dailly produced a prototype on his 486 PC, working with an isometric viewpoint and all of the action on foot due to issues getting vehicles around the city. But when it came to actually playing this early prototype, it was deemed too slow. It didn't help that Syndicate Wars looked similar, so Dailly went back to the drawing board and created a second prototype, this time from a side-on perspective.

A short while later, Dailly spoke to John Whyte, the lead programmer of Body Harvest for the N64. Whyte had wanted to create a top-down racer but Jones wasn't interested, yet it got Dailly thinking. Adding a floor to his side-on demo, he turned his second prototype from a side-on view to a top-down perspective. Then, using the first prototype as a base, he built perspective points using cubes to produce a pseudo-3D effect. DMA's management team loved it, and the new game, entitled Race'N'Chase, was given the go-ahead.

In 1995, DMA drew up design documents for the title. Aiming "to produce a fun, addictive and fast multiplayer car racing and crashing game which uses a novel graphics method" and set in the present day, the developers had an idea for three cities, each with their own graphical style. The game was to be packed with missions. There were, the document detailed, to be pedestrians. Such bystanders could be run over by cars. Players could also get out of cars and steal others. And this would attract the attention of the police.

The initial meetings about the direction of the game were somewhat chaotic. "The only agreed direction was that we were basically writing a game that we would want to play ourselves," says lead programmer Keith Hamilton. "Everything had to be interactive. The player had to be able to drive any vehicle he could find. Nothing was to be off-limits. We wanted fun situations to present themselves just by all the elements coming together, not necessarily in ways that were specially designed."

About the only thing they could decide upon at this stage was that the top-down view was the best way forward, nixing suggestions of using full 3D from a very early stage. DMA wanted whatever game was made to be delivered over multiple platforms – the PlayStation, PC and, originally, the Saturn – and while it was theoretically possible to do 3D on the PC, the console versions simply wouldn't support it. "The choices were to more or less develop two different game engines, or focus on making the game as rich and deep and fun as we could on an engine that would run across all of the platforms," recalls writer Brian Baglow. "So we did that. I think it was the right decision."

Although design documents existed, much of the game was made up on the spur of the moment. "The game evolved," explains Dailly. "It was a true 'team-designed' game." Each design decision therefore became an experiment. The 'eureka' moment came when the team thought about the player leaving their own car and getting into a different one. They realised that, because the other car wasn't really the player's, they must be a criminal, and so the infamous GTA theme was born.

"We envisaged a straight cops-and-robbers driving game," recalls Baglow. "But it went from that to a car-based crime sim and wild sandbox adventure. We initially had the player as a good guy, and it was a long way down the line before the decision to try playing as the criminal was made. And at that point, we could see that there was something in there. Something fun and unique."

As the months went by, DMA's new game, which changed its name to Grand Theft Auto mid-project, started to grow. A lot of fresh talent was hired to work on the game, resulting in a very young team.

Despite the inexperience, the ambition remained. The simulation aspects of the game continued to be important, especially for Hamilton, who felt it was crucial to create a city that the player could see in action and then enjoy interfering with. For this reason, police cars drove all the way from the police station to a crime, while ambulances motored from the hospital and contained little characters with stretchers to pick up bodies. "If you followed them, you could see that they actually went back to the hospital," says Hamilton. The team also planned to have teams of traffic light repairmen who would drive out and fix any traffic lights if you broke them. "We dropped that because it was getting a bit too anal and because players just ignored the traffic lights anyway."

City slickers

The levels were designed by just three people: Stephen Banks took on San Andreas, Billy Thomson looked after Vice City, and Paul Farley was responsible for Liberty City. Farley had quit a degree in architecture and only envisaged being with DMA Design for six months while he figured out what he wanted to do with his life, and when he started on GTA it was little more than an ugly-looking and rather rough demo. Yet while it wasn't the game everyone on the team wanted to produce – "I think most of us would rather have been working on one of the sexier Nintendo first-party games," says Farley – those working on it soon recognised the game's potential.

"The actual level design was fairly straightforward in the most part," says Farley. "At the time I came on board there were some rough guidelines to the possibilities and limitations of the game engine. The head of art had already written down some core design considerations regarding the flow of space within the game. This helped communicate to the team some of the fundamental aims of the driving part of the game."

The team were big fans of topdown racers like Super Sprint and Micro Machines, and these games informed some of the vehicle-handling objectives. "Even from an early stage, we were looking at how to make the driving flow well and be as forgiving as possible – the geometry of the levels plays a huge part in enabling this," continues Farley. "I think we did a good job of both allowing the player space to express themselves and their driving skills, while providing contrasting spaces to support gameplay focused on pedestrian play. A real difficulty was the lack of diagonal road or sidewalk tiles. I know I struggled with some aspects of Liberty City because of that limitation."

The team was given a lot of freedom on the game's direction. Remarkably, only one person on the team had ever shipped a game before, but despite that, they were handed a huge amount of responsibility and ownership over the title and, says Farley, it helped them make clear and quick decisions. Each of the three level designers took one of the city maps each.

"You can clearly see the different approaches coming through both the level design and missions across the three maps," explains Farley. And they had a laugh doing it. "Quite early on, the sense of humour in the team was becoming evident in the game. In keeping with this cheeky nature, it seemed natural to take real-life American cities as our inspiration and send them up a little. I'm sure there are kids that fly into New York for the first time and are more familiar with it as Liberty City. I hope they aren't disappointed; it's an amazing city but not quite like it's portrayed in-game."

The criminal aspects let the imagination of the team run riot. It was possible to mow down a line of Hare Krishnas to earn a 'Gouranga' bonus, for instance. "We could also use the pager and text to tell the players about things that didn't really happen, like with bomb shops and respray shops," adds Baglow. "Some cars wouldn't remap, so the idea was going to be dropped. It was suggested giving the player a message saying the plates had been changed instead. Simple, fast and it worked."

Some ideas didn't make it, however. Vehicles, characters, missions and city locations all got cut along the way. "We wanted combine harvesters to mow down pedestrians. We never quite had time for it, so never had to consider the issue of whether that might have been taking things too far," says Hamilton. Cutscenes, voiceovers and cinematic sequences were also axed, with the game having just one cut-scene per city for the main bad guys.

"We also ended up losing the original maps, which is a tragedy," continues Baglow. "We had created full maps for each town and around the border of each were adverts for local businesses, vouchers and tourist destinations, all made up and in keeping with the style and feel of each city. It's one of the few things I never managed to get a copy of or find when the company became Rockstar North. In my imagination, they were awesome. In real-life… well, we may never know."

Other ideas were in the PC version but dropped for consoles due to hardware limitations. "Speaking for the PlayStation version, we had big problems with the trains mainly due to the way they were implemented on the PC. They used a lot of memory and were only used properly in a few missions, so we had to drop them. It was unfortunate, but we had to live with the realities of the situation," explains PS1 programmer Russell Kay.

According to Farley, however, the team was fearless. It wasn't scared of failure and it was open to new ideas. Some of the team even wanted missions involving burning churches but, above all, they wanted to give the player a sense of right and wrong. "The player could choose not to act in a certain way if they didn't want to. If we had included missions where you were forced to single out certain groups of people to kill or abuse based on race or religion, that would have been a step too far, and it would have devalued the player's sense of choice to the detriment of the game and its subsequent success."

On a mission

One of the problems that faced the team was how best to integrate the missions. The level designers were using fairly complex tools to create fun, challenging and exciting activities for the player, but it ran as a series of challenges that were fundamentally unconnected. The game essentially ran along the lines of 'go here, steal this car, drive to this point, leave it, get on a bike, take it to this point' and so on. So once the missions were in place, it was up to Baglow to come up with the specifics of what exactly the player was doing and why.

"This 'plot' or narrative had to be delivered," he explains. "There were no voiceovers, animation or cut-scenes featuring a rich variety of protagonists. Instead we had around 120 characters on a 'pager' at the top of the screen. This was years before Twitter too! Everything had to be scaled back and written for the maximum amount of information in the smallest amount of space."

But that wasn't the only problem he faced. "The missions could be played in pretty much any order within each city, so there was no real way of doing any sort of linear plot within a single city. Putting together little self-contained missions was a definite challenge. There was a lot of allusion and implied action taking place elsewhere, just to make the writing reflect the 'living, breathing city' thing that the whole game embodied."

The non-linear mission system came later in the game's development. At first, the game had players returning to a sub-menu to select their next mission, but the level designers felt this broke the immersive nature of the game and that the front end was too boring. Coming up with the idea of spawning missions from payphones, characters, vehicles and other in-game elements was groundbreaking at the time, effectively building the level selection into the game itself, and it made a huge difference to the player's suspension of disbelief.

"I don't think the code team were initially very pleased at this because they had never designed the engine to run indefinitely," says Farley. "The new mission structure certainly created a number of new issues for them to solve, but I'm glad they did."

The key to this was the level scripting system. The programmers invented a language that the level designer could use to set up the missions so that they would all be different. But although this brought great freshness to the game and the title was starting to come along at a cracking pace, with the 20-strong team working hard to perfect the gameplay, the whole project came close to cancellation on a few occasions.

It was DMA's first game with a million-dollar budget and it was much bigger than anything the team had previously attempted, but when a group of high-ranking American executives from DMA's publisher, BMG Interactive, arrived, it almost killed the game. "They came to the studio, bizarrely wearing shorts, and they really didn't 'get' the game, with its outdated visuals, loads of bugs, and no clear genre," remembers Hamilton. "Fortunately, Dave Jones worked his magic and we were given a stay of execution."

Under the tree

GTA was released before Christmas and didn't appear that special on the face of it. It was brought to the table at a time when gamers were becoming used to playing in 3D and some reviewers reported drab, lifeless visuals and awkward driving dynamics. This, however, told only half a story. Here was an expansive, mould-breaking, free-form game with a compelling plot that also allowed for freedom and exploration. It had driving, shooting, chases and theft. It had all of the basic elements that have made the series so incredibly popular.

And while the missions lent purpose, the audio brought the city to life with its seven radio stations and police band track that boomed from car stereos and encouraged players to try different vehicles to see which tunes they got. There was a great sense that you were a criminal let loose on a metropolis, and you were not only up against other villains but the police too. It was a chance to run wild as the game car-jacked your mind and drove away with it.

A PlayStation version was essential, and it was created by Visual Science. Russell Kay had been the head PC programmer at DMA Design but left to form the new firm, which was located a short walk away. Visual Science worked with Psygnosis on several projects and so gained PlayStation experience, and when DMA realised that it couldn't deliver the PlayStation version in time, it called on Visual Science to assist.

The team consisted of four people, plus two programmers from DMA for a couple of months to help with some of the missions. They created a very rough port to the PlayStation devkit, which had much more memory than a retail machine. This allowed them to see it all working, albeit very slowly – less than a frame per second. "We then profiled the code to see where the slowdown was, and it was pretty much where we expected it to be: the rendering and the AI code," says Russell.

"Over the next few months we optimised those areas while refining the control scheme. We had to completely rewrite the front end for the system, as the control mechanism and Sony's Technical Requirements Checklist were so different. It took quite a while to get right. We spent around eight months on the conversion overall."

The biggest problem was taking the PC version, which used around 16MB of RAM, and squeezing it into 2MB on the PlayStation. "The other challenge was the audio," admits Russell. "The rich PC audio had to be squeezed into the minuscule RAM of the PlayStation. We used CD audio for the radio stations and made all of the other sound effects and police chatter as standard audio."

David Cowan was the lead engineer on the port. "I remember nothing on the PC version being documented very well. Most of the docs were very out of date, so the only references we had were the code and assets themselves," he says. "We didn't have access to the original assets either because they were spread all over the DMA network and no one knew how to bring them all together, so we ended up writing a tool that read in the finalised PC retail packages and converted them back to individual sprites, sounds, levels and so on so we could convert them."

Cowan remembers the code for the pedestrian system being horrendous, and he had to significantly modify it so that it wouldn't store the state of every pedestrian and car in the game. On the PlayStation, the state of each of these things was cached only for a short time and was randomly generated within 20 or 30 metres of the edge of the screen, which quartered the memory requirement. "Dead bodies disappeared after 30 seconds or so, and vehicles were randomly generated as you were driving or walking around. Skid marks on the PC version were also stored indefinitely but 'evaporated' on the PS1," says Cowan.

GTA went down a storm on release, and it caused an inevitable wave of controversy. Politicians began to debate the game and there were calls for it to be banned. There was talk of videogame censorship. But Baglow says the team didn't realise how contentious it would be.

"I think some of the team were a little shocked by the tabloid response, questions in Parliament and getting the game on Question Time," he says. "But once everyone realised that this was just the way the media works, they all settled down a bit and started to enjoy it. After all, we'd made a game that gamers, critics and the people actually playing the game all thought was pretty bloody good.The controversy and hysteria was nothing compared to the satisfaction of having made a game that I think everyone involved can be justifiably proud of."

Our best GTA games ranking runs down the series so far!

GTA 6 is bringing back a feature from San Andreas and other Rockstar games that is generally well-remembered despite being one of the worst parts about living as a human being in real-life: if you eat a lot and don't exercise, you'll get a big, old, round tummy, and people will expect you to giggle when they poke it.

OK, that last part isn't true, but it has been confirmed that your character in GTA 6 will have a body that changes based on your eating, exercise, and sleep habits. Revealed in an early deep-dive on GTA 6 published by Dazed, you'll get chubby if you eat too much, chiseled if you exercise enough, and visibly worn out if you go too long without sleeping.

If you've played earlier Rockstar games like GTA: San Andreas and Red Dead Redemption 2, you'll remember this sort of interactivity between your in-game avatar and your behavior, with Dazed pointing out Arthur Morgan's bruised and battered body after fights and long, grown-out beard following periods of uncivilized living. In short, GTA 6 doing the same thing isn't anything new, but it was unknown whether it would carry on with this unusual level of realism until now.

We're about to learn a lot more about the game with Netflix's GTA 6 gameplay reveal happening this Thursday despite the recent leaks. And speaking of which, Rockstar has finally issued its official public response to that whole situation, describing the leaks as "heartbreaking" and saying, "this is obviously not how we intended for you to see the game after all this time."

GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are "the north stars of gaming," says Gamescom chief, but they won't last forever because "most gamers aren't only interested in a single game"

The latest GTA 6 leak is the biggest one yet. Leaker Cyberleek has shared a 4:38 clip of the prologue story for female protagonist Lucia, mere hours after developer Rockstar acknowledged the mounting leaks and called them "heartbreaking."

While this clip doesn't spoil the entire opening of GTA 6, it is the largest story spoiler released so far.

Cyberleek threatened to release Lucia's prologue earlier this week. In the same post, the person or group behind the leaks called on "at least 10 gamers" to "show up dressed as leeks" at the offices of Rockstar or owner Take-Two Interactive "holding game discs during working hours."

As ever, the leaker is also pushing a radioactive crypto coin, charging exorbitant fees to discuss ad space on the leaked footage, and steadily filling out an entire chapter on how to get sued into ash. It could not be more obvious that the leaker seeks to extract maximum personal gain from this mess.

An even more incendiary message covers this Lucia leak (punctuation added for legibility). "This build is actually recent and the game is not ready at all," Cyberleek writes. The limited, fragmented nature of the GTA 6 clips released thus far has led many to believe that the game build in Cyberleek's possession is outdated and incomplete.

"Sony and Rockstar are killing your right to own and resell your games," it continues, echoing the unhinged "commandments" on the Cyberleek website and taking aim at Sony's unpopular move to end PlayStation disc production in January 2028. GTA 6 is a digital-only release, with physical editions limited to codes in boxes.

"And Rockstar is killing their own employees too," the message adds, "the work required to reach gold is way too much for so little time left. Trading volume price is how CL measures your support. CL will not continue without support. You decide."

Rockstar's documented, occasionally debated history of crunch during development is doing it no favors here, but it goes without saying that you shouldn't trust the claims of a person or group openly peddling a meme coin.

Cyberleek has a vested interest not only in appearing legitimate but in piggybacking on GTA 6 anticipation like a barnacle. Increasingly aggressive crypto pushes like this will only fuel the theory that Cyberleek's window is closing as Take-Two ramps up its investigation into the leaker's identity and, per Kotaku, online vigilantes also pursue their identity.

Reports indicate Cyberleek's actions haven't affected Rockstar's road to launch, nor has the August 27 Netflix trailer reveal been derailed.

In its statement addressing the leaks, Rockstar writes: "While it is unfortunate that the intended game experience may now be impacted by some spoilers, we hope that everyone will wait a bit longer to experience the game for themselves on November 19."

New GTA 6 leak shows physical media is alive and well in Vice City, including one game that pokes fun at The Last of Us and Naughty Dog's many remasters.

On the eve of Netflix's big GTA 6 preview, another leak has sprung up of Rockstar's blockbuster sandbox. This one, the 15th in total, focuses on a bit of namesake automobile theft, followed by a good old-fashioned police chase, demonstrating the mechanics at play.

The clip opens with the player character robbing a car by smashing the window and dragging the driver out - a series staple made even more visceral this time around - and then driving off in the vehicle. It's nighttime in a quiet part of town, and the person in control drives erratically through the city streets, causing impromptu traffic jams and near-accidents.

Then, after speeding through an intersection, the police get involved, causing a high-speed pursuit. Things get messier from there on: fences are broken down, cars grind against each other, all the hallmarks of some Grand Theft Auto tomfoolery.

Then, in a post-credits scene worthy of the MCU, Lucia pops up right at the end in a little cinematic. She calls out someone for being a terrible driver - probably whoever you're playing as in that section.

As with previous clips, Cyberleek is taking responsibility, putting watermarks all over the minute-and-a-half of gameplay. This anomalous group has proven to be a thorn in Rockstar's side, who recently responded to the ongoing leaks.

"It has taken longer than we wanted to get it ready, but as with everything we do, we know we need to exceed your expectations, and we are determined to deliver at the level you expect and deserve," the statement reads. "While it is unfortunate that the intended game experience may now be impacted by some spoilers, we hope that everyone will wait a bit longer to experience the game for themselves on November 19."

Legal action is underway, as Rockstar's approached Discord with a court order over the leaked materials. There's no formal movement on that front yet, but if the leaks continue, you can expect ramifications to increase.

New GTA 6 leak shows physical media is alive and well in Vice City, including one game that pokes fun at The Last of Us and Naughty Dog's many remasters

It's Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026, which means we're getting a first look at a plethora of new titles and various sneak peeks at those we've already been looking forward to – including Ananta.

In case you've not seen Ananta out in the wild before, it's a free-to-play open-world anime-style game (say that three times fast, eh?) with some heavy GTA vibes that mark it as an action-packed adventure fans of Rockstar's own beloved series won't want to miss – and it turns out it's arriving sooner than expected.

As per its new trailer showcased at Gamescom 2026, in fact, the Ananta release date is January 2027... just two months after GTA 6 drops on November 19 this year. Although developer Naked Rain and publisher NetEase Games don't provide us with a specific launch day or time just yet, that's still a pretty solid little window.

Plus, it's not all that far off now – only five months, give or take, in fact, depending on what particular date Ananta releases come January of next year.

As for the gameplay itself, it looks just as Grand Thefto Auto-y as ever, with high-speed vehicle chases, high-speed combat, and high-speed vehicular... flying?! There's a lot going on, honestly, but I'm locked in.

The anime aesthetic is eye-catching, too, if I do say so myself. The characters are all gorgeous, the outfits are peak, and the world design is impressive (from what we can see so far, anyway – and I'm not the only one loving it all, judging by the comments.

"Holy," reads one, "that’s so peak!" Another person exclaims, "I HAVEN'T FELT THIS HAPPY IN SO LONG. LET'S GOOO!"

Here's hoping it arrives sooner rather than later in January, as it's evident we all can't wait to get our hands on it – and, thankfully, it'll be on PC, PlayStation 5, and mobile platforms.

Searching for even more to look forward to? Here's our handy roundup of the most exciting new games coming this year and beyond to wishlist.

The drip of GTA 6 leaks from anonymous group Cyberleek has turned into a flooding riverbed. The rush of information isn't slowing, and Cyberleek seems intent on never stopping, despite Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two, trying its best to unmask the leaker group's members. Meanwhile, a new gameplay clip from Cyberleek suggests that GTA 6 features a The Last of Us reference.

In Cyberleek's most recent clip, which was uploaded to Twitter and beyond but went down shortly after due to a copyright strike, Jason checks out a store named Game Horde while Cyberleek watermarks the screen with a message about its antagonistic leaks: "THIS IS NOT ABOUT ACTUAL DISCS. IT IS ABOUT OWNERSHIP."

If you say so. On that note, Jason seems to have approached the Game Horde building intending to expand his physical game ownership, but then he doesn't.

Instead, Jason uses binoculars like a creep to observe every detail in Game Horde's streaky windows, including the several video game parodies Rockstar snuck in for the most observant among us.

Then, around the 0:22 mark, we can see an advertisement for the fictional JS8, which impresses me with how far it's past our culture's current PS5 generation. Perhaps thinking the same thing, Jason once again pulls out his handy binoculars to better observe several titles on the store shelf, which is now right in front of his face.

The spines stuffing the shelves reveal a choice selection of games like Dark Souls parody GLORY SOULS II, Desolate Rim, whose font looks a lot like FPS Titanfall, and We Came Together I, II & III Remasters of the Remakes – a spoof on The Last of Us franchise's seemingly incurable need to renew and represent itself in front of a fresh audience.

This implied criticism is being thrown from a glass house, however, since Rockstar isn't usually ever willing to abandon its most profitable game series, either. Otherwise, it wouldn't spend a decade building anticipation for GTA 6.

Ultimately, Jason decides he doesn't want to buy that physical copy of Righteous Slaughter: Spree-For-All. He instead tries on some purple headphones before stalking off into the approaching night, where infinitely more detail – and, I'm sure, more fodder for leaks – await us.

Discord will "evaluate the validity and scope before responding" to controversial GTA 6 leaks court order, but the platform "has not yet been served."

Red Dead Redemption 2 is still going strong despite being a good eight years old now, with fans keeping it alive via expansive mods – like Nuevo Paraíso, the "ambitious recreation of the Mexican territory from RDR1" we've waited some time for.

We don't have much longer to wait, thankfully, as creator Rixus has unveiled the mod's big release date in a new trailer over on YouTube – and it's coming next month on September 16.

Seeing as we're just a few weeks away from the launch now, that's quite big news… and it's accompanied by a fresh sneak peek at Nuevo Paraíso, too. Between the searing landscapes and populated towns showcased, I'm honestly not sure what I'm personally most excited for.

As Rixus writes, there's plenty to look forward to, after all – and it's all been "recreated to fit seamlessly within the story and timeline of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 1907" as well: "Explore a Mexico on the brink of change, where beautiful landscapes and growing settlements stand alongside political unrest, government oppression, and a population struggling under an increasingly unstable regime."

Yes, it's the period leading into the Mexican Revolution of 1911… with loads of new features.

"Discover new settlements, hidden locations, activities, encounters, mysteries, Easter eggs, wildlife, local people, classic characters, and dangers as you travel across the state," as Rixus puts it. Yep – Easter eggs, Rockstar Games-style. There are gang hideouts, train robberies, and shops galore to also uncover.

The modder describes Nuevo Paraíso as "more than a journey across the border" and "an ambitious fan-made expansion created to bring Mexico back to life, while remaining faithful to the atmosphere, identity, and canon of Red Dead Redemption" – the perfect mod, if you ask me.

It'll be entirely free over on Nexus Mods, too (exclusively for PC players, sorry, console users), as Rixus confirms, come mid-September... and yeah, I've bookmarked his page on the website already.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's "excellent storytelling" praised by Red Dead Redemption 2 lead actor Roger Clark as he finally sits down to play Warhorse's RPG

It's been a wild few days for excited GTA 6 fans, as one very brave – you know, considering how Rockstar Games previously cracked down on unauthorized footage being shared – leaker has posted a plethora of supposed clips from the upcoming game.

In case you've missed it, Rockstar has responded in turn with DMCA takedowns against the leaker's posts, which come from a profile that links to a manifesto of sorts… one that demands better digital rights, physical copies, and claims to be "raising funds for a secret project" of sorts.

Heck, it's even caught the eye of Stop Killing Games, the video game preservation movement spurred by Ubisoft's 2014 shutdown of The Crew.

Most recently, Take-Two, Rockstar's parent company, has subpoenaed Microsoft and Discord, demanding hundreds of thousands of users' personal information, including emails, IP addresses, phone numbers, and the like… all reportedly in an attempt to track down the leaker.

According to Discord, however, this subpoena has not come through to the instant messaging platform – yet, anyway.

Ryan K. Rigney, marketing director at Discord, confirms as much over on X in response to concerns over Take-Two's subpoena and its implications for users' privacy.

"I can share an update on this," he writes. Discord has not yet been served with a subpoena from Take-Two. When we do, we'll evaluate the validity and scope before responding."

Understandably, the comments still highlight numerous concerns.

"No, you're supposed to just say no," one reads. "Wtf do you mean you'll negotiate our privacy for ONE person?" Another argues, "That subpoena wouldn't stand up to a mouse fart," explaining that "you can't blanket" so many users "to get personal information on a game of Where's Waldo without some kind of relevance for each account."

And, yeah… let's just say that folks are not happy about the prospect of such a subpoena.

There's no telling what Take-Two has up its sleeve, though – I suppose Rigney will post an update of sorts when there is one, but for now, it appears that nothing has gone through just yet at Discord from Rockstar's parent company.

Rockstar "overreacts a bit at times," says former tech lead as GTA 6 leaks continue, but it's "their job" to stop them

Most reasonable people would say charging for ad space on leaked footage from the most anticipated media launch of all time warrants a pretty strong response from the IP holder, but when it comes to Rockstar's years-long predicament with GTA 6 leaks, unfortunately there is reliable reporting that suggests that response disproportionately impacts employees with no involvement in the leaks.

According to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, Rockstar implemented tight security measures including a return-to-office mandate for all employees following the explosive GTA 6 leak from 2022, which added salt to the wound when more leaks surfaced last week. The new leaker causing everyone at Rockstar to lose sleep currently has yet to be identified and has threatened substantial story spoilers. Rockstar has yet to respond publicly but has pursued aggressive legal action, as is its right, in the view of former Rockstar technical lead Obbe Vermeij, who was with Rockstar from 1995 to 2009.

Over on Twitter, Vermeij used his insights as a former lead at the company to say, "[Rockstar New York] overreacts a bit at times" before adding, "But it is their job to try to stop these kind of leaks."

Never thee mind, though, as Vermeij said in the same breath that the leaks "are a nothing burger" because 90% of prospective players aren't looking around online for spoilers. "I was there during Hot Coffee," he added, referring to an incident in which a very NSFW mini-game mistakenly made its way into GTA San Andreas.

"It was a nightmare for management [Rockstar's New York offices] but didn't affect us [Rockstar North] much. The current leaks are far less consequential than [Hot Coffee] was. It looks like GTA 6 will be phenomenal and sell for the next 15 years or so. The leaks are just a tiny blip."

A tiny blip feels a little reductive considering gameplay and map details have been revealed against Rockstar's will and now story spoilers are on the table, but at the end of the day, GTA is going to GTA and there's little that could stop GTA 6 from being the biggest video game launch of all time.

GTA 6 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are "the north stars of gaming," says Gamescom chief, but they won't last forever because "most gamers aren't only interested in a single game"

The latest GTA 6 leak from Cyberleek sees protagonist Jason Duval take a trip, and a camera, to a nude night party that quickly descends into a shooting.

For all the naked NPCs in this new GTA 6 clip, more attention has been paid to the QR code-backed message laid over the footage. After nearly a dozen clips of random violence and activities, Cyberleek is now threatening to post major story spoilers.

Their message reads: "Do you want a Lucia-led prologue? CL has been evading spoilers. CL just cannot make that decision, so a poll is required, plus, to show support at least 10 gamers need to show up dressed as leeks in front of Take2/Rock* [Take-Two/Rockstar] offices holding game discs during working hours."

The new nudist party clip is, in short, a gallery of shiny hineys. Male and female NPCs dance and talk in the nude as Jason looks very closely at them through a zoomed sight. Rockstar's attention to detail is on full display, with NPCs showing a range of body types.

One female NPC seems to react to Jason's lingering gaze, saying, "You got a friggin' problem or what? What, you want a closer look?" The NPC confronts Jason and, in true GTA fashion, is quickly attacked, sparking a murder spree.

Cyberleek has been polling topics of new gameplay footage since last week despite the systematic takedown of its website and mirrors, but this latest post marks a significant escalation. We've yet to see anything of Lucia, for one, nor has the group posted significant story spoilers thus far.

With this message, Cyberleek is openly inciting gamers to demonstrate outside the offices of either GTA 6 developer Rockstar or studio owner Take-Two, seemingly to echo the group's so-called "commandments," which oppose baked-in DLC, digital pre-orders, server shutdowns that make single-player content unplayable, and the general end of physical games.

Digital rights and preservationist group Stop Killing Games disavowed Cyberleek in a statement, saying, "Using illegal means to make a point is unacceptable."

Between today's public call to action and charging upwards of $165,000 selling ad space on GTA 6 leaks, Cyberleek has done a fabulous job giving Rockstar lawyers ammunition.

GTA 6 is only available digitally, and the person or group behind Cyberleek previously claimed that the leaks would continue until Rockstar changed its position and "issued a public statement and apology with a concrete commitment to be better."

Rockstar has kept quiet about the leaks so far, though Take-Two has subpoenaed Microsoft and Discord for account details potentially connected to Cyberleek. Xbox said it is "working closely" with Take-Two and Rockstar to support its apparent investigation.

This leak incident reportedly hasn't changed Rockstar's GTA 6 Netflix reveal or broader marketing and release plans.

It's important to remember that this entire leak scheme has also seen Cyberleek push a cryptocurrency ripe for a rug pull.

Previously: GTA 6 leaks suggest Cyberleek has access to Lucia as fans become even more convinced they have Rockstar's full game in their hands.

The GTA 6 leaks just keep on coming, and one new clip suggests that those responsible may have access to the game's second protagonist Lucia – something they're yet to actually show off.

Our latest round of GTA 6 leaks has been going on for around a week now, and it's currently showing no signs of stopping. The leaker behind it, known as Cyberleek, has been steadily releasing gameplay clips online – including one that suggested they may have access to a playable build in some capacity – and fans have been analyzing all of their videos for insight into what we can expect when Rockstar's latest game releases in November.

Well, just as one of the clips from last week indicated that a playable build could be in the leaker's hands, a new one seems to hint that they might have got access to Lucia, too. Lucia has been strangely absent from all of Cyberleek's clips so far, with gameplay shown solely from Jason's perspective, but an objective pop-up appears near the end of a recent one that says "Return to Lucia."

So, what's the significance? Looking at reactions online, it seems many folks are now more convinced that the leaker has access to the full game rather than just a portion of it. After all, Lucia's absence from the leaks had left some doubtful that they had a complete build, and at the very least question why she hadn't been seen yet – it seemed unusual that a leaker would choose not to show her, leaving some to speculate that they were unable to.

Personally, I'm not confident this is the right conclusion to draw – it's worth keeping in mind that Cyberleek has also been using this whole leak situation to sell crypto, releasing different videos as more folks buy their crypto coin. On top of that, the leaker is seemingly now selling ad space on their future leaks – the price for Cyberleek to apparently contact someone to discuss this? Over $160,000. Needless to say, it's not in the leaker's interest to rush out all of the content they seemingly have access to.

For what it's worth, there's been another leak since the "Return to Lucia" objective was shown, in which she was still completely absent, so we'll just have to wait and see if the leaker is actually teasing gameplay featuring her.

Neither Rockstar Games nor Take-Two Interactive have publicly released a statement acknowledging the situation, but last week, Take-Two filed subpoenas requesting that Microsoft and Discord help it "obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers," so the company is clearly hard at work trying to catch those responsible.

Xbox's chief technology officer, Scott Van Vliet, later confirmed that "we are working closely with Take-Two and Rockstar Games to support efforts to protect creative works and intellectual property."

Former Rockstar Games lead says GTA 6 leaks are a "nothing burger" because "90% of future players" aren't searching for the clips online.

GTA 6 currently feels like such a juggernaut that the entire industry is bracing for its impact, but the head of one of the world's biggest gaming events says he's not worried that Rockstar won't be at his show.

Speaking to GamesRadar+, Stefan Heikhaus, brand director at Gamescom, acknowledged that "games like GTA or other big releases over the last couple of years [...] are extremely important. For the game industry, they are the North Stars."

But GTA 6 won't be at Gamescom - in fact, Rockstar is directly competing with the event in Germany, with the GTA 6 Extended Look dropping on Netflix the evening before the show kicks off in earnest.

For Tim Endres, Gamescom director, it would be nice if those two things were happening in tandem - "of course we're always happy when everything happens at Gamescom," he says. But both he and Heikhaus are more focused on the hundreds of games that will be at the show.

At "events like Gamescom," Heikhaus says, "not only can you experience one game, but thousands of games, or at least hundreds. And this is the important difference. Of course, GTA will take some visibility and awareness from the digital Gamescom. But I believe that quickly, people will come back to Gamescom once they have seen the GTA content, because there are so many things, so many world premieres, so much new stuff to see, to experience. Hundreds of studios and companies."

Crucially, he points out, "there are not many gamers who have only focused on one single game. Most of them are interested in a lot of different games."

GTA 6 might be a tentpole release, but it can only hold players' attention for so long before something else comes along to challenge for it instead. Gamescom's continued growth - now at 1,600 exhibitors and counting - is evidence of that, and Heikhaus says "the indie scene has grown dramatically in the last 15 years."

It's not always easy to find an audience in that growing scene, especially not with massive releases like GTA 6 threatening to suck the air out of the room, but Heikhaus and Endres want Gamescom to be a platform for all kinds of games, whether or not they're made by Rockstar.

GTA 6 leaks go from bad to worse for Rockstar as new footage suggests leaker has access to a playable build.

GTA 6 developer Rockstar and publisher Take-Two Interactive aren't having good weeks. With just weeks to go until the Netflix extended look really kicks off the marketing campaign in earnest, a massive GTA 6 leak surfaced online Tuesday afternoon and revealed the full Leonida map as well as what looked to be near-final gameplay. The leaker, who goes by Cyberleek online, soon after revealed yet another leak that suggested they had access to a playable build of the game, which is really a worst case scenario for Rockstar and Take-Two in the final months to launch.

Cyberleek has threatened even more leaks if Take-Two doesn't reverse-course and print GTA 6 on physical discs instead of sticking to digital-only as is the plan right now. Rockstar in turn has issued DMCA takedowns but has yet to identify the leaker, and now as Cyberleek continually proves they'll make good on their threat, Take-Two has subpoenaed Microsoft and Discord in order "to obtain the identity" of the leaker and presumably sue them into oblivion.

Now, the reason we're here. The tweet. Xbox's chief technology officer Scott Van Vliet sent out a tweet Friday evening seemingly confirming the company's coordination with Rockstar and Take-Two on the GTA 6 leaks. "We are working closely with Take-Two and Rockstar Games to support efforts to protect creative works and intellectual property," reads the tweet.

Admittedly, the tweet is written in such a way that suggests it was reviewed and edited by a dozen lawyers and HR managers to avoid actually saying anything meaningful and specific. Is it about the subpoena Take-Two sent to Microsoft? Probably, but not for certain. Is it even about the GTA 6 leak at all? Definitely, but as Rockstar and Take-Two have declined to publicly comment on the leaks, it makes sense for Xbox to stop short of straight-up confirming their authenticity in a public forum. For now, it seems the takeaway, if there is one, is simply that Xbox seems to be cooperating with the subpoena from Take-Two, but again, that's not explicitly confirmed.

I've reached out to Xbox for comment and will update this article if I hear back.

GTA 6 leaker Cyberleek is now charging a $165,000 fee for a chance to buy ad space on additional leaks

Contrary to what your self-preservation instincts might tell you, GTA 6 leaker Cyberleek is not hiding under a rock that's under another rock that's in the middle of a rainforest with no cell phone service. They're not even taking extra precautions following Take-Two's recent subpoenas demanding Microsoft and Discord share information that might reveal the anonymous hacker's identity. Instead, Cyberleek has decided to publicly share its contact information.

The leaker is looking for advertisers. According to a new "contact" tab on Cyberleek's website, the merry group is "raising funds through community support and strategic partnerships" by selling ad space on its forthcoming GTA 6 leaks – well, if Take-Two doesn't turn it into canned peaches by then. Some of the "strategic partnerships" Cyberleek offers involve "custom-made gameplay footage tailored to specific brands (including sexual content)."

Sounds like a business venture with integrity to me; the stolen GTA 6 clips simply fell off a truck, anyway. Cyberleek emphasizes it's not demanding "a ransom where publishers pay to stop the leeks." It's just a shy boy looking for advertisers to send it a ton of Monero cryptocurrency to plaster ads across its copyright-infringing videos, so that Take-Two can more easily figure out who they are and where to put their graveyard plot.

"All pricing, terms, and deliverables are discussed privately over Session," a private messenger, says Cyberleek. "The Monero transfer serves as a contact fee that guarantees CYBERLEEK will respond to initiate the conversation."

Clicking a button to "generate contact details" displays a prompt to save your generated recovery password for Session, and then you pay the donation fee: 400 XMR (Monero), which currently converts to about $165,450.

This fee only guarantees Cyberleek will reach out to you over Session within 24 hours. The group stresses that, otherwise, advertisement "deal terms are worked out in chat," and it reminds interested parties, "You can advertise almost anything. Gambling and adult content are fine. No scams." No, I'd never think there were scams involved here. It's all squeaky clean fun with my friends – that's what handing a stranger $165,000 usually means, right?

Cyberleek's GTA 6 leaks won't change Rockstar's Netflix reveal plans, report says.