The new trailerforGTA 6is here, hot on the heels of thecrushing but not entirely unexpected delay into 2026. While the first trailer was a bold, far-reaching attempt to showcase the depth of its setting and highlight just how detailedRockstarhas managed to make its games look, it also revealed a worrying issue for the series, one that the recent delay only exacerbates.
That first trailer, while it did lay the groundwork for the Bonnie & Clyde love story at Grand Theft Auto 6’s centre, was crammed full of memes, likethe Florida Joker, or the alligator that wandered into Walmart. And by memes, I mean ‘extremely outdated pop culture moments we’d all mostly forgotten’. The Florida Joker, one of the more recent events featured in the trailer, was from 2017. That Walmart story was from 2013.
Games take a long time to make these days, and games made by Rockstar take more time than any other. There was a lingering doubt that GTA loses its magic when you pop it in the slow cooker - this has always been an up to the minute microwave pizza by the slice, something there right when you need it. Can GTA 6 still be a GTA game with all of the guts and glory that name brings if it can’t deliver up to the minute political commentary? We now have our answer.
Grand Theft Auto Has Always Been Built On Its Storytelling
For one thing, this new glimpse at GTA 6 gives us far more narrative meat to bite into. Almost every scene focuses specifically on Lucia and Jason, our dual protagonists. We see Lucia getting out of jail and meeting Jason, and flickers of their less glamorous life (Lucia wears a hi-vis jacket as part of some temp job or parole terms), as well as a lot of the ways in which crime does indeed pay.
They ride jet skis, they attend fancy parties, they ride helicopters, and they escape from ensuing police patrols, either by speedily evading them or just straight up blowing them up. With the cop at the jail seeming to recognise Jason, and another detective telling his crew that police protect their own, it also lends credence to the fact Jason may be a former, oreven a current defecting/undercover cop.
There was little doubt that the storyline is part of the game Rockstar would have locked down. It’s probably not accurate to say it’s carrying momentum fromRed Dead Redemption 2into GTA 6 with the almost eight year gap between them, but Rockstar has always been a studio that has told dense, layered, gripping stories about violence and wealth. RDR2 is the company’s magnum opus in that regard, and I have always trusted that GTA 6 would continue to deliver.
GTA 6 Is Still A Political Satire
But how do you satirise modern America?Just two days ago, President Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself on social media forStar Wars Daywith fake, ripped biceps, holding a red lightsaber - the colour of the Sith, ie the irredeemable bad guys. The week before, it was a picture of himself as the Pope, despite the fact he was raised Presbyterian and now considers himself nondenominational. And, you know, all the other so completely far beyond parody caveats of a sitting world leader suggesting without irony that he should be the next Pope.
This has been the issue for Rockstar to reckon with. Not only has the game taken so long to make and release that it cannot possibly keep its finger on the pulse of a moving target, but the current state of US politics has gotten so ridiculous that if Rockstar had predicted it, those drafts would have been thrown out on the basis of being entirely unrealistic. But beneath the surface level bizarreness that has somehow become an everyday occurrence, there is still an America, mostly unchanging, that Rockstar can reflect back at us.
We see homeless people drunkenly perched outside of convenience stores, police shoving Black teens in the street, the glorification of gun-assisted self-defence indelibly tied to patriotism and sex by ammo infomercials. This is America now, and it was American then. All of those things could have been part of doodled sketches in 2019 or so when work on the game began, and all of them are just as relevant today. The details change. The picture remains.
This is what GTA has always been so good at striking at the heart of. Sure, the period piece titles can zoom in on specific figures because that era is fixed, crystalised, recognised by symbols that have remained in the public consciousness. But mostly, GTA has been about stories. GTA 4, still the most effective title at understanding this, is about the American Dream. As it was then, as it is now, as it was before. GTA might not be able to tell specific, up to date tales of the ever shifting political landscape anymore, but it can still discuss the America beneath that landscape. It’s ugly, broken, overlooked. GTA 6 is here to shine a light.
