Thirteen years is enough time to build an ungodly amount of expectation, especially if it’s one of the most hyped games of all time. Rockstar has been dropping carefully picked glimpses of Grand Theft Auto 6, and I already knew Vice City looked gorgeous. I knew Rockstar was chasing the obsessive environmental detail that made Red Dead Redemption 2 such an absorbing world.
The new Grand Theft Auto VI extended look is the first time all of those ideas have properly clicked.
Rockstar’s roughly 26-minute showcase moves between missions, quieter character moments, driving, shootouts, exploration, and everyday life around Leonida. According to Rockstar, every frame was captured from in-game footage on PlayStation 5. There is an enormous amount to pick apart, from the characters to the mechanics. But one thing that stuck with me is that GTA 6 looks like Rockstar taking lessons from almost everything it has made before and pouring them into one enormous modern crime story. And Jason and Lucia may be what holds the whole thing together.
Jason and Lucia look like partners, on and off the streets
Everyone’s been making the Bonnie and Clyde comparison since GTA 6 was first revealed. Rockstar has now explicitly described the story that way, with narrative lead Rupert Humphries calling it a Bonnie-and-Clyde-type narrative. And with the extended look, we get some real substance behind this reference. Jason and Lucia talk constantly. They cover each other in fights, drive together, split up during jobs, and move through missions as a pair. This chemistry continues outside the “professional criminal activities as well. When things are calm, they still argue, flirt, and unwind at home.
This could play into the overall mechanics, which determine how both of them play. Rockstar hasn’t said Lucia carries some permanent “+10 driving” stat while Jason gets a “+10 shooting” bonus, but similar to GTA V’s character affinity, we might see some unique stat boosts once again. Jason repeatedly comes across as the more straightforward muscle, handling much of the armed security work. Lucia gets some of the more agile sequences, including driving during the getaway and navigating a later mission without her guns.
The second mission is where their chemistry is really front and center. Jason and Lucia are providing security at a corporate event when armed attackers crash the party. Jason gets pulled into the gunfight while Lucia, who has had her weapons confiscated, has to survive through movement, stealth, and close-quarters fighting elsewhere in the building. During this time, they help each other, with Jason sending a grenade into the elevator for distraction, and each sharing vital info about the situation.
GTA 6 has inspirations
The longer I watched the showcase, the more I kept seeing flashes of Rockstar’s older games. The security sequence immediately gave me Max Payne 3 energy. Jason is moving between cover, popping off precise shots during a chaotic indoor assault, and the showcase even gives us slow-motion shooting and dramatic kill shots. Even the part related to the drug pickup has a bit of familiarity.
Jason and Lucia walk into a drug operation expecting a relatively straightforward job. Things deteriorate, police descend on the building, and suddenly you’re fighting through law enforcement before trying to escape. The entire sequence took me back to the kind of escalating criminal mess that GTA: San Andreas excelled at, where something that begins as street-level business quickly turns into a city-wide problem.
Rockstar appears comfortable borrowing from itself here. The heavier character animation and obsessive environmental interaction recall Red Dead Redemption 2. Seamless switching naturally develops what Rockstar established with GTA V, and just like before, the food and exercise still play a part like in San Andreas. Sleep deprivation and prolonged time on the run can also visibly alter Jason and Lucia.
Vice City somehow looks nostalgic and completely modern
Vice City carries enormous nostalgia. I still associate Vice City with palm trees, neon, Hawaiian shirts, sports cars, and a heavily exaggerated version of 1980s Miami. GTA 6 needs to bring that place into the present without turning the new game into a giant tribute act. The Extended Look makes the city look remarkably convincing in both eras at once.
There are familiar low-rise neighborhoods, beaches, and swampy stretches. But you’re not missing out on old-school criminals, corner crews, and the kind of local characters who could have wandered out of an older GTA. Surrounding them are enormous modern developments, smartphones, influencers, livestreamers, and all other signs of a modern-day setting. The bit where Lucia ends up dragging a livestreaming influencer along during an escape turns the crime into a content-farming sequence.
Rockstar has confirmed that GTA 6 contains working social media feeds, while its developers describe modern Vice City as a culture shaped heavily by social media, celebrity, tourists, fashion, and rapidly changing trends. So the game gets to keep the city’s old criminal personality while satirizing an era where someone getting kidnapped might worry about the livestream angle first.
Leonida is alive and breathing
Any open-world game only feels alive if the world around it is dynamic. The point is not true realism; it’s highly interactive and fun interactions. You see this in tiny moments like petting a dog, shooting some hoops, and even the funny advertisements. I could see Jason and Lucia’s apartment to accumulate the little visual details that make it look inhabited, even if the part where he grabbed the beer from the refrigerator broke the immersion a little.
Setting that aside, you also want it to be fun to look at — and boy, does Rockstar make the game world look pretty. We’re talking different zones with vastly different vibes, keeping that classic income divide in areas steady since the original GTA Vice City. Populating the streets are NPCs that had an entire studio in Los Angeles dedicated to them, which helped make their behavior feel more dynamic.
November suddenly looks very far away
Twenty-six carefully edited minutes cannot tell me whether an 80-hour campaign holds together or whether mission design eventually becomes repetitive. We don’t know if Rockstar’s extraordinary attention to detail ever starts getting in the player’s way. There are times when too many little interactions add to the tedious work. Jason and Lucia have great chemistry, and their missions appear designed around two protagonists who can work together or approach situations differently. Vice City looks simultaneously familiar and contemporary, with old-school criminals sharing the streets with influencers documenting every second of their lives.
And underneath all of it, I can see pieces of San Andreas, GTA 5, Max Payne 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2 being pulled together. I’ve spent years hoping GTA 6 would somehow justify the ridiculous expectations surrounding it. After watching Rockstar finally show the game properly, those expectations haven’t gotten any smaller. There’s plenty of nitpicking around the extended look, and I can understand most of it. Still, November 19 has a lot of people anxiously waiting, and it seems a little too far away.
