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.
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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.
Forget couple goals – these two have couple objectives.
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.
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