Folks, I want to be professional about this. I really do. I sat down Tuesday morning, coffee in hand, prepared to watch three minutes of Rockstar’s finest Leonida propaganda with the measured detachment of a man who has personally boosted a car in every single decade since the Clinton administration. That lasted approximately eleven seconds, right around the time the trailer opened on a quiet bayside town with a guy fixing a roof, and I understood in my bones that this was going to be a whole thing.
That guy on the roof, for the two of you who’ve been living under a Ballad-of-Gay-Tony-shaped rock, is Jason Duval. Grew up around criminals, did a stint in the Army trying to get right, wound up running product for a Keys drug smuggler anyway — which, respectfully, is the most Leonida career arc I have ever heard, and I include my cousin Gary’s brief run as a “reptile logistics consultant” in that assessment. His partner is Lucia Caminos, fresh out of prison, calm in a way that suggests she has already thought through several ways to kill you and settled on the quiet one. Bonnie and Clyde energy, according to basically everyone covering this trailer, and I won’t argue — though I will note that Bonnie and Clyde never had to deal with Ambrosia zoning meetings.
Speaking of which — there’s a mayoral race brewing in Ambrosia, and the candidate is running on the slogan that she’s finally a politician with some backbone, bankrolled by a sugar refinery. I have covered four actual Leonida elections in my career and I want the record to show this is, if anything, a more dignified campaign than most of them.
The vehicle montage is where I lost several minutes of my life rewatching: speedboats, dirt bikes, a guy hopping a motorcycle onto the back of a moving semi to steal a sports car mid-transport, which is either the most efficient carjacking in franchise history or a felony tutorial, and I refuse to elaborate further. There’s an Ammu-Nation ad promising more guns than the law allows, which, sure, fine, that checks out. And somewhere in there a phone gets used to hack a security system, which tells me Rockstar has finally accepted that Leonidians commit crimes with their thumbs now, not just their glove compartments.
Is it better than San Andreas? I’m not saying that. I’m not not saying that.
The trailer closes with Jason and Lucia driving over a bridge into the sunset, which is either a beautiful piece of visual storytelling or Rockstar’s way of telling me I’ve spent my entire adult life waiting for a bridge. Both, probably. Both is fine.
Until next time, Leonida — check your rearview mirror, check your Ammu-Nation receipt, and if you see a man crying quietly at his desk on May 26, 2026, no, that’s not me, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
— Dale Marsh-Kettner