Leonida, sit down. Grab a Sprunk, prop your gator-repellent boots up on the porch, because your dear columnist has now watched the thing approximately eleven times and needs to talk about it.
Late last month, Rockstar finally stopped teasing and let the world see actual, honest-to-god gameplay: not a trailer stitched together from cutscenes and vibes, but nearly half an hour of PlayStation 5 footage centered on Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos as they make their way through Vice City together. It debuted on Netflix of all places, in a partnership so unprecedented that the platform reportedly crashed almost immediately under demand. I want that on the record: a video game broke a streaming service. Somewhere, a Liberty City modem from 2001 is laughing at all of you.
The Bonnie and Clyde of it all
The footage leans hard into the doomed-lovers-on-a-crime-spree energy that’s been rumored for years. We get Jason and Lucia doing business on a rooftop bar, a deal with a character named Andreas going sideways, and the pair pulling security duty at the opening of a place called Mega Mundo. Because nothing says “healthy relationship” like moonlighting as bodyguards between felonies. There are smaller character beats too: Jason eating snacks, Lucia sparring, something that looked suspiciously like backyard wrestling. It’s the kind of humanizing detail this series has always been better at than people give it credit for.
The radio dial has range
If you know me, you know I judge every GTA game first by its soundtrack and second by everything else. Early word is the curation spans Sexyy Red, Depeche Mode, and Phil Collins. That’s either the most unhinged playlist in franchise history or exactly the right amount of unhinged for a state built on humidity and bad decisions. Either way, prediction: at least one of those three ends up as the unofficial theme song of Leonida’s next hurricane season.
The sim stuff is real, and it is a lot
The showcase confirmed a level of life-simulation detail that’s got GTA purists either delighted or nervous. Me, I’m both, and I’ve earned it. Apparently your appearance will visibly change if you spend days on the run from the police, your character actually needs sleep, and yes, you can go viral on the in-game social media platform, which fans have theorized since trailer one. So to answer the question I know is coming: yes, in GTA6 you can, in fact, doomscroll. We have finally built the mirror.
There’s also apparently a zoo you can visit to learn about the local wildlife, in a very Red Dead Redemption 2 kind of move. Respectfully, Rockstar: some of us already learned about Leonida’s wildlife the hard way, in the parking lot of a Waffle Kingdom, during a hurricane. I don’t need a diorama. I need a raise.
The numbers, for those of you who like numbers
For the completionists among you: series veteran Rob Nelson estimated around 80 hours to get through the main story and narrative-driven side content on his own playthrough, and the map itself is reportedly around three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2’s already-enormous world. Mark your calendars and cancel your plans accordingly: the game is still on track for November 19, on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Now, a word on how we got here
This whole rollout happened under the shadow of months of leaks from a figure calling themselves Cyberleek, who’d been drip-feeding footage for weeks (including, just the night before the official reveal, nearly five minutes from Lucia’s prologue) while Rockstar and Take-Two pursued subpoenas trying to identify them. Rockstar’s own statement on the mess called the leaks “heartbreaking,” adding that it hadn’t intended for fans to see the game that way after all this time. I’ve got no love for anyone leaking a decade of someone’s work onto a crypto grift, and I say that as a man who has personally been leaked on (metaphorically) by every rival columnist across three console generations.
A word on graphics, because everyone else already screamed about it
The character faces are photorealistic to a degree that’s making people uncomfortable in a good way, and reactions have singled out the range of body shapes among background characters as unusually well done for the genre. Progress, folks. Even the extras in Leonida look more three-dimensional than some of our city council members.
Back in my day
I remember when a “gameplay reveal” meant a grainy screenshot in a magazine and a prayer. I remember top-down Liberty City, where a car chase was four pixels evading six pixels and everyone was happy about it. Now we’ve got sleep cycles, viral posts, and a soundtrack featuring Phil Collins, and Netflix can’t handle the traffic. Leonida doesn’t do subtle progress. Leonida does progress by knocking the door clean off the hinges.
Until next time, Leonida — keep your car doors locked, your gators fed, and your expectations for city hall appropriately low.
— Dale Marsh-Kettner