It is official! Grand Theft Auto 6 is a go and Rockstar Games is surely busy preparing one of the most highly anticipated games to ever release in history. The excitement build up each day and every gamer is always up on whatever update there may be for GTA 6.
Rockstar Games subtly revealed in February 2022 that they are bringing GTA 6 to the table in a GTA 5 Community Update where they confirmed that the next Grand Theft Auto game is in active development and underway. This brought a huge excitement to the whole gaming community with fans longing for another Grand Theft Auto game after a decade of waiting of what comes next after GTA V.
On December 4, Rockstar released an official description for GTA 6 along with the release of the first trailer:
Grand Theft Auto VI heads to the state of Leonida, home to the neon-soaked streets of Vice City and beyond in the biggest, most immersive evolution of the Grand Theft Auto series yet.
Now, here's everything we know so far on Grand Theft Auto 6 with the release date speculations, trailer release, game setting and location, characters, leaks, updates, and more!
GTA 6 Release Date Speculation: When to expect Grand Theft Auto 6?
Rockstar Games has not confirmed any exact release date yet for Grand Theft Auto 6 but what is good is that there is already a release window confirmed when the trailer of GTA 6 came out. GTA 6 is bound to happen in 2025. As to when exactly it would come out remains unknown but fans speculate that the game would be out in early 2025, specifically March of that year, after Rockstar Games' parent company, Take-Two Interactive revealed its net bookings projection for the 2025 fiscal year ballooning up to $8 billion as per a report from GamesBeat and this implies that the game would need to be released early to reach such projection.
The 2025 release of GTA 6 could still move as well, depending on how much time Rockstar Games would need to bring GTA 6 to the market and ensure that the game is already ready. Over the years, Rockstar Games holds a history of delays like that of Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto V, and Red Dead Redemption II which were released beyond their release windows. While it is too early to predict for GTA 6, the release remains to be in 2025.
Is there a trailer for GTA 6?
The GTA 6 trailer gave everyone a glimpse of what to expect in the game plus there were tons of homages to real life events. Supposedly, the GTA 6 trailer would be out at 9 AM ET on December 5th but because of the leaks that happened right before the trailer went live, Rockstar Games released the trailer of a minute and 31 seconds long to avoid more leaks. The trailer is attached above.
The first announcement made was through a statement of their President, Sam Houser, last November 8, 2023 is that the first trailer of Grand Theft Auto 6 will be releasing in early December and that the company is looking forward to share it to those who are eagerly waiting for the highly anticipated game. The GTA 6 trailer introduced Jason and Lucia and revealed the modern Leonida (Rockstar's version of Florida) and Vice City alongside more clues and hints on what the game would be bringing to the table.
Who are the characters in GTA 6?
Grand Theft Auto is known to bring great characters over the years in the game series. For GTA 6, various leaks reveal that for the first time, the game will be having two playable characters with the same vibe as that of Bonnie and Clyde. This has been confirmed by the trailer with Jason and Lucia who are together in a car chase, an intimate moment, and holding up a diner together. What makes it interesting is that it's expected that playerscan interchange between the characters in the game.
Lucia is set to be the very first Latina female protagonist in the game series. More than that, she will reportedly have a child in the narrative in the storyline cutscenes. This would also be the first time that there will be such a young character in the story of Grand Theft Auto, and this has got the fans already enraged that a child would be part of the gruesome narrative of the game.
Aside from Jason, Lucia, and Lucia's child, leaks also reveal that GTA 6 would include AI NPCs and this is hinted by Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick in an interview with Inverse. Zelnick said:
Everyone’s working on that. You’re a playable character, you’re interacting with the non-playable character. That interaction is currently scripted. And the non-playable characters are generally not very interesting. You could imagine all the NPCs becoming really interesting and fun.
AI has been a hot topic recently as various AI-generated content are all over the internet and should AI have a role to play in GTA 6, it would be interesting to see how Rockstar Games would integrate this innovation in GTA 6. Also, leaks revealed that the characters of the game would be aging as the game progresses which could give a more authentic experience for the players.
What is the gameplay of GTA 6?
Rockstar Games faced a massive shock as a huge leak happened in September 2023 where they were hacked. From there, it was revealed that GTA 6 will be set in a familiar place to the Grand Theft Auto fans as it is will reportedly be in a modern-day Vice City. Longtime gamers would recognize Vice City from the 2006 title of the same name, and a leaked gameplay footage showed what this modern-day Vice City would look like. Rockstar Games already confirmed that this footage is real.
The leaked gameplay footage reveals "Vice City Metro", an underground railway system, and familiar places from GTA 3 like the Vice Beach, Malibu Club, Little Haiti, and Ocean View Hotel. It also hints being modern-day Vice City as it shows NPCs having smartphones and modern-day clothes which is similar to Miami, Florida in the present.
Since there is no official word yet from Rockstar Games on how the new game will play out, the leaked gameplay footage gives a hint on how the new mechanics would work out. A new series of stealth mechanics was seen in the leaked gameplay where the characters could crawl even when they are prone and carrying bodies. There was also a weapon wheel, an overhaul for GTA V, that could return in some capacity. New health buff items are also suggested to arrive like painkillers, and there were hacking items, too, in the leaked footage. The Five Star 'Wanted' system may also make a return and VCPD have improved AI routines to make it easier to track the characters once on the radar. Again, all there are from leaks so better take it as a grain of salt.
GTA 6 Map Leak: Is it only in Vice City?
While there is still no official GTA 6 map revealed by Rockstar Games, the same leaked footage that Rockstar Games confirmed may have given away something special to the maps of GTA 6. Leaks speculate that the playable area for GTA 6 will be going beyond Vice City and @GTAVInewz on X (formerly Twitter) even mentioned that GTA 6 will be having an "ever-evolving map" where there would be new cities that would be included as the game progresses. Rumors also point to other locations for GTA 6 such as Georgia and Florida.
The expanse of GTA 6 is shown through a glimpse on the trailer which showed Leonida, the fictionalized state of Florida. It teased how massive the game is with the different parts of the place featured throughout the GTA 6 trailer. As per the size of the map of GTA 6, speculations revolve around it being 10 times bigger than the maps of the previous games which means that the players will be having bigger locations to explore in the game.
What other leaked details are there for GTA 6?
As mentioned, tons of leaks are now out as the anticipation for GTA 6 continues to hype the fans out there. Being leaked details, again, take everything with a grain of salt but here are some of the juiciest of all the leaked details for GTA 6 like the pre-order details being as early as before this year ends, the price of the game being a major concern as it was leaked to be priced at hundreds of dollars, the game would bring back single-player expansions like that in GTA IV, the feature of a co-op gameplay, the tools and weapons that would be available for GTA 6, and more.
As the anticipation builds each day, expect more exciting news and updates for GTA 6 and tune in to EpicFlix to get the latest scoop on the game!
