Nobody outside Rockstar has played this game. Everything below is
either Rockstar's own, or what the six people they showed it to came
back with. Every line tells you which. When they disagree, you get
both.
Grand Theft Auto VI returns to Vice City, now the largest city in the state of Leonida. Two leads, one story, and Rockstar describing it as a single player experience.
Vice City, the largest city in the state of Leonida.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
Jason and Lucia Two people used to the odds being against them. A robbery that goes wrong drops them into a criminal conspiracy running the length of Leonida, and leaves them dependent on each other to get out of it.
Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, the full 26-minute showing, aired 27 August 2026.Rockstar Games, via GameTrailers
How big is it, actually
Rob Nelson, co-studio head of Rockstar North and the man at the controller for every session, would not give IGN a measurement at all. He gave TGG four of them.
It is an island Confirmed to elrubius during his session, along with the fact that there is no landmass to the north as had been rumoured. Community-drawn maps assembled from trailer footage turned out to be not far off.
Districts have their own character Buildings and the people in them are styled to fit the culture of where they are, rather than being dressed from one shared kit.
Each region has its own biome, and its own people Wetland, forest, port, coast and city are distinct environments rather than one landscape with different props. NPCs carry the characteristics of where they live, and civilian number plates match the region they are from.
The pause map is satellite imagery A considerable step up from the flat street diagram of previous entries, closer to looking at a real aerial photograph of the state.
Traffic is much heavier and the roads are tighter Nelson's words: traffic density is “crazy” compared with previous games, and the lanes are narrower than Grand Theft Auto V's. He frames getting good at driving as its own reward.
Once free roam opens, nothing is fenced off The story walks you outward through the map as it goes, but MikeShowSha was told that the moment free roam unlocks you can go anywhere, including the far edge of the map, with no barriers and nothing gating the way.
Hundreds of interiors, and no number beyond that TGG asked outright how many buildings you can enter and did not get a figure, only that it runs to hundreds.
Missions leave their doors open Some interiors stay shut until a mission takes you into one. After that it is open for good and becomes somewhere you can walk back into, with more to find in it later.
A day lasts longer than it did Davy Jones asked the director outright how long a day and a night run. The answer was a little longer than in Grand Theft Auto V, with no figure attached to it.
The interface tells you what you can walk into There is a function that marks which buildings are enterable. Rockstar want as many as possible to be, having noticed that previous entries let you into a handful, but Kinda Funny were told to keep expectations realistic: not every building will open.
Missions are not only on the map Events and jobs exist outside objective icons, and the game is built to reward wandering rather than travelling between markers.
Random events find you One in the demo: a dishevelled lawyer sitting in a dumpster who returns a favour with legal advice. Another: someone going off a bridge in front of you, unprompted.
Fast travel is an app A ride-hailing parody called Ryde Me. Share the car with another passenger and you can hold a full conversation for the length of the journey.
The largest genuinely new system in the game is the bond between its two protagonists, and Rockstar has built it so that you can play the whole story as partners in crime who never become anything else.
Jason and Lucia at home.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
Switch at will As in Grand Theft Auto V, you move between the two leads freely in the open world, with a zoom-out transition when they are apart. Certain story beats lock you to one of them.
Swap seats mid-drive Hand over the wheel and sit back with the radio on, or during a chase take the passenger seat and shoot while the other drives. Not a scripted set piece: it works in free roam.
The AI partner is a good driver Nelson on the convertible shot in the Extended Look: they are often better at driving than you are, leaving you free to aim behind and shoot out tyres. He describes escapes that end up feeling like scripted missions when they were not.
The partner AI knows the objective He got on a bike in free roam with Lucia riding pillion and shooting at police under AI control. Asked where the AI drives to when you switch, the director's answer was that it knows it has to lose the police, so it will do that for you.
You can go and find the other one Something Grand Theft Auto V never allowed. Drive across town as Lucia and Jason is genuinely there, waiting at a bus stop. He gets in, rides along, and you can swap freely from there.
One ability, shared He asked whether the leads have different special abilities in the Grand Theft Auto V sense. They do not: both have the same shooting ability, which is Focus.
The switch is still being tuned Moving between leads who are far apart still plays the Grand Theft Auto V cloud transition. Rockstar told him during the session that they were working on making it faster.
They notice when you disappear Spend a day away and you may get a text asking you to lock up when you get in, or telling you they have gone to bed. Ignoring those messages can damage the relationship.
Abandon one and they notice Leave your partner behind in a firefight and they will be angry about it, and the relationship takes the hit. elrubius got a text from Jason reading roughly “aren't you forgetting something?” after he and Nelson became so absorbed in finding a helicopter that they left him standing at the scene of a robbery.
The bond has mechanical weight after all Worth setting against the accounts that call the romance purely cosmetic. elrubius was told that time spent together improves how effectively the pair work as a team, and that the state of the relationship affects things like how well a robbery goes.
Lucia will not judge a rampage Asked what happens to the relationship if Jason simply goes off, Nelson's answer was that Lucia goes with you. He described the two as trusting each other and fairly unbothered, to the point that she will put bodies in the boot of the car for you.
The romance is optional and unrewarded Both want it at the outset, but it only develops if you spend time together outside missions, and there is no mechanical benefit if you do. It is a roleplaying choice, deliberately.
How the bond grows Exploring Leonida together, shopping, visiting salons, working out as a pair, dates around the Keys, and committing robberies as a couple.
The relationship has a readout A heart icon sits in the character-switch menu alongside each lead, so the current state of the bond is visible rather than inferred.
The romance can fail. The partnership cannot MikeShowSha came away understanding that the pair can separate outright. IGN put it the other way round, plainly, that there is no dumping your partner, and Nelson says they remain partners in crime whether or not they are romantically close. What both accounts agree on is that the romance may never take, and that how close they end up has a bearing on how their story plays out.
They always have each other's backs However badly it goes between them, the main story requires they stay a unit. How close they are changes how that story plays out.
Red Dead Redemption 2 had honour, with a clear moral direction. Grand Theft Auto VI has a Criminal Profile, Rockstar is insistent that it does not come with a right answer, and each lead has their own.
Not a morality system Rockstar was explicit with both visitors that this is not there to nudge you into playing the good guy, and is not Red Dead Redemption 2's honour under a new name. It tracks what kind of criminal you are.
Jason and Lucia are scored separately The switch menu shows a different profile state for each. You can run one as a disciplined professional and the other as a liability, if that is the playthrough you want.
Petting dogs will not save you The small kindnesses register, and Rockstar's own example of a positive is deliberately mundane: throwing your own rubbish away. But Nelson was blunt with Kinda Funny that if you are sitting low on the profile, no amount of petting dogs brings you back. The only thing that does is restraint during robberies.
Nelson on whether it changes the story “It may, depending on how you play. There's no right or wrong way to play the game, just a bit more choice.” Pressed on whether that changes what Grand Theft Auto is, he said it changes what it can be for people who want to engage with it that way. The freedom to cause as much chaos as you like is untouched.
Every icon is a devil. Some just have haloes Davy Jones read the icons as a devil and an angel. Kinda Funny put that to Nelson directly and got a correction worth having verbatim: they all have devil horns, it is called your criminal profile, you are still a criminal, it has got to be Grand Theft Auto. The best you get is a devil wearing a halo.
Rockstar would not be pinned down on the story effect Asked straight out whether the profile changes the narrative, the answer was that things change, without specifics. Worth setting against the more confident accounts elsewhere: every visitor asked, and none came home with a concrete answer.
There is no bar, there is a tab Nothing creeps up and down at the edge of the screen. The state of both leads sits in a Jason and Lucia tab in the menu, alongside how their relationship is doing, and you go and look at it rather than being nagged by it.
Low is not the same as bad Nelson was emphatic with TGG on this. A low criminal profile is not a failure state or a moral judgement, it is a different way of playing. What raises it is competence: rob a store and get out without killing anyone and the profile goes up, because you did the crime properly.
At the bottom, the logo cracks Sink far enough and the icon itself shatters, and that is the end of it for the playthrough. There is no route back from there. It is the same irrecoverable state Kinda Funny were told about, described from the other side.
Patterns change how you are treated Consistent behaviour affects how the world and the people in it react to you in free roam, and can affect how the main story plays out.
You can put yourself beyond redemption It is not a bar that slides up and down. Nelson told Kinda Funny that you can reject the system hard enough to lock yourself into an irredeemable state, one you cannot greet your way out of. He also admitted they are still balancing it, and that testers kept saying “why did I get that, I shouldn't have got that”.
The point is whether you gave them a chance Nelson's framing: aim at someone and tell them to hand over the money or get out of the car, and they have a chance to comply. They might not, and then you decide again. Walk into a shop and shoot someone in the head and it registers, because you did not need to do that.
It is not the relationship system Nelson is explicit that these are two separate systems: one tracks what sort of criminal you are, the other tracks how Jason and Lucia are doing. Davy Jones came away with the impression the profile feeds the relationship, which is worth holding loosely against a direct statement that they are apart.
Missions are largely exempt Crimes committed during missions and robberies, or when the game forces aggression on you, will not necessarily move the profile.
Safehouses modelled on Red Dead Redemption 2's camps, a phone that is an object rather than an overlay, physical stats back for the first time since San Andreas, and a level of domestic detail that Rockstar seems slightly delighted by.
Safehouses are camps, not menus Closer to Red Dead Redemption 2's camp than a traditional GTA apartment. Other people come and go, and one home shown belonged to somebody other than the leads. Lights, fridges and the rest are interactive.
Health, stamina and focus Three bars, each permanently raisable through activity. Strength work at the gym raises health, cardio raises stamina, and other activities raise focus. Three gym sessions in an in-game day earns a boost, and the phone has a fitness app that tracks it.
Consumables give you a temporary overtop Eat or drink the right thing and a stat extends past its normal ceiling for one use: an apple for health, a Blitz Berry smoothie for stamina and focus, a beer for nothing at all. Take damage and you refill only to the ordinary bar, not the boosted one.
Nine things are being tracked IGN read the stat screen off the demo: height, weight, sleep, nutrition, calories, shape, muscle, fat and strength. Sleep is on that list, and no other account has mentioned it.
Food is labelled by what it does Items carry a heart or a lightning bolt, the same shorthand Red Dead Redemption 2 used for health and stamina. Running occasionally throws up a cardio workout prompt of its own.
The gym does two for the price of one Nelson: go together and both of them work out, so a single trip manages both sets of stats. You can go alone, obviously.
Weight and muscle return Back for the first time since San Andreas. The gym builds muscularity; overeating adds weight. Either lead can do any of it, alone or as a pair.
San Andreas-style skills are back Not just the gym. Stamina, cycling and driving are among a set of abilities that improve by doing them, which the series last had properly in San Andreas.
You can set how fast you walk Buried in the settings and aimed squarely at the most common Red Dead Redemption 2 complaint. Nelson: people were annoyed by the slow walking, so normal walk, fast and jog can each be made your default. He framed the whole menu the same way, as options, options, options.
Salons do not all stock the same styles Deliberately. Cuts and fashion are tied to the character of the neighbourhood they are in, so a particular braid or a particular look means going to the part of the city where it belongs. Nails as well as hair.
Most shops never close The majority stay open around the clock so that a plan is never blocked by opening hours, though some businesses do shut at night.
Hair does not grow A deliberate departure from Red Dead Redemption 2, where you wait for length before you can have a style. Rockstar chose to let you walk into a barber and pick whatever you want instead. They were explicit more broadly that they pulled back from Red Dead Redemption 2's level of simulation on purpose.
Personal vehicles, with working trunks Each lead can own several, limited by cash and by garage space. The boot is where spare weapons, a change of clothes and stolen goods live, which turns out to matter enormously once the police are involved.
You do not furnish the place Asked whether you buy things for your apartment, Nelson said you do not, and that the houses are not permanent fixtures. What you do buy is vehicles, clothes and weapons.
Grooming at home, styles at the salon Shorten or shave hair and facial hair at the safehouse. Genuinely new styles still mean a trip out, and salons and clothing stores each stock things you cannot get anywhere else.
Every fabric behaves differently Rockstar has costume designers working on the clothes, and the director told Davy Jones that the physics of cloth is among the harder things they do. Where Grand Theft Auto V largely moved clothing to one pattern, here each fabric is meant to behave on its own terms.
Almost everything responds Fridges open and are stocked. A bottle is opened with the right animation and the liquid inside moves. Doors open and close, light switches work. The roleplay rumours of the past months turned out to be accurate.
Water gets you wet Wading out to steal a jet ski soaked Jason's clothes and hair. Hit a pedestrian with a vehicle and their possessions go flying, phone and glasses included, each with its own physics.
The animal list is a bestiary Not just a tick-list. elrubius was told it works like a catalogue you fill in as you encounter things, and there are a great many animals, iguanas especially.
None of it is compulsory Nelson was clear that the side activities are optional in the strong sense: you can finish the game having never set foot in a gym. Engaging with them buys you modest boosts, nothing more.
The gym is a small simulation of a gym You buy a membership at the front desk. There are vending machines by the changing rooms selling, among other things, a protein shake that temporarily raises stamina and strength so you can manage more reps. A set of eight on the bench fills a third of a workout ring, and completing three strength exercises earns a health boost for a while.
Things to do Pool, mini golf, kayaking, jet skis, the zoo, scuba diving with an oxygen meter, parachute jumps, basketball, wrestling, a shooting range, fishing, racing and the gym. Neither account presented that as complete.
Animals get catalogued Study animals at the zoo or in the wild and each new one is ticked off a list, a system carried over from Red Dead Redemption 2. Dogs can be petted. Or scolded.
The phone is a physical object No more corner overlay. The camera pushes in on the lead's hand as they take it out, the way Red Dead Redemption 2 shifts view when Arthur cleans a pistol.
Fast travel is not one system Bus stops, train stations, trams and taxis all move you around, alongside the ride-hailing app, so how you cross the map is itself a choice.
The apps have names Buckme for banking, Ride Me for a taxi, WhatUp for texting, a fitness app that tracks your workouts, and Scooter Bros, which calls your own car to you. That last one has never been in a Grand Theft Auto single-player campaign before.
Social media points at things happening now The in-game feed is not set dressing. You can see what NPCs are posting and where they posted it, drive to that location, and find the event still going on.
You can only lurk on Snapmatic The Instagram parody returns, but posting is out. The pair are on the run and are not leaving a digital trail. You can follow accounts and scroll.
More adverts than any previous GTA Across radio and television both. Seen so far: an antidepressant called Angstipan, the Prairie Sandwich at a modest 30,000 calories, and a fast-food parody set in Mount Kalaga.
Groceries were built, then cut Nelson told TGG that at one point you had to go and buy groceries, and that they took it out for being a step too far. Buying food and drink survived: he bought the six-pack Jason carries in the second trailer.
The detail goes further than it needs to You can finish an apple and put the core in a bin. Rockstar also volunteered that you can wait for someone to pick up after their dog, hit them, take the bag, and throw it at people. That is the register they are working in.
Inside a safehouse. Confetti, balloons and last night's bottles.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
People who notice you
The crowd is no longer set dressing. NPCs vary in build in a way no previous Rockstar game managed, they hold conversations you can stand and listen to, they commit crimes of their own, and they will tell you when you have been standing there too long.
A bar, and the people in it.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
Bodies vary, and animation adapts A far wider range of height and build than any earlier Rockstar game, with animations dynamically retargeted so that people of different sizes interact plausibly with the world and each other.
A team that worked on nothing but NPCs Not the wider game team turning to crowds at the end of production. A large group dedicated solely to the population, its behaviour, its habits and its mannerisms.
Four ways to open a conversation Holster your weapon and target someone for greet or taunt, or for defuse and provoke if they have already started on you. The system is an evolution of Red Dead Redemption 2's.
You ask before petting the dog Approach someone walking a dog and the prompt is to talk to the owner and ask permission. They can say no. The one they tried barked at them and the owner was rude about it. The lead has physics and caught on Jason's arm as they walked away.
The crowd is handcrafted, not generated Asked outright whether the population is procedural, Nelson said no, it is all handcrafted, with artists deciding that a given character would not wear that hairstyle or those clothes. His comparison: Red Dead Redemption 2 had perhaps three skeletons because every animation has to connect, and this has a huge range of heights and builds that all still line up.
Eavesdropping is a mechanic and a risk Stand near a conversation and listen. They will clock you, and may take issue. The same applies if you follow someone for an uncomfortable length of time.
A team in Los Angeles wrote nothing but NPC dialogue Separate from the crowd team in Edinburgh, and the reason the streets are full of lines worth stopping for.
Years of meeting the people they are writing about Rupert Humphries, Rockstar's senior vice president of narrative, told Dazed the studio sits down with "ex-criminals, law enforcement, club promoters, gun dealers" and anyone else notorious enough to take the call, and listens. Staff have been visiting Miami and the area around it for years, and a research team is based in the city.
Fifty street artists, a stylist and racing drivers More than fifty real street artists were commissioned to paint murals, the Miami stylist Jillian Carr has worked on the game since 2023, and racing drivers sit on the vehicle handling team.
The studio has more than doubled since Red Dead Redemption 2 Rockstar is more than twice the size it was when that game shipped, across offices worldwide. The Los Angeles one given over to NPCs is a piece of that growth.
Everyone has a different threshold Taunt someone and they might be offended or come at you. Draw a weapon and they might cower or escalate. Start something and it can pull in a group who had nothing to do with it. Nelson's summary of the old balance: you used to be the only one with an invisible arsenal hidden away.
Rockstar's own staff had not seen it happen During a robbery in MikeShowSha's session something kicked off that the developers in the room, people who have played the game through repeatedly across some two hundred builds, told him they had never seen before. A useful measure of how much of this world is not scripted.
Many hundreds of voiced NPCs Asked how many, Rockstar's answer was many hundreds, counting the cops, bouncers and bartenders you can talk to as well as the crowd.
Other people rob things Security vans get held up by NPCs while you are driving past. In Grand Theft Auto V you were the only person in the state who ever did that.
Conversations become activities Interactions and even ambient dialogue can spin up emergent events. Jason or Lucia may also suggest a nearby job or activity themselves, turning a trip into something else entirely if you agree.
The single biggest change to how Grand Theft Auto plays moment to moment: the hard auto-aim that has anchored the series for two decades has been removed. What replaces it is a slower, more deliberate shooter with a time-dilation ability and an explicit non-lethal option.
Mid-firefight, at close quarters.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
No more hard lock-on Pulling the trigger no longer snaps you onto a target. Aim assist of the ordinary third-person-shooter sort remains, along with weapon bloom, but the classic GTA lock is gone.
Focus slows time and marks weak points Its own bar, alongside health and stamina. It works like Dead Eye, but additionally highlights where to shoot: red for a lethal hit, yellow for a non-lethal one. It works on vehicles as well as people.
Shooting to stop, not kill Hit an arm or a leg to put someone down non-lethally, or shoot the weapon out of their hands if you are accurate enough. Three hit markers tell you which happened: white for a hit, yellow for incapacitated, red for a kill.
A big gun does not go unnoticed Carry two two-handed weapons and one of them rides visibly on your back, and the city has something to say about it. The director's line was that you can play a psychopath if you want to, but the consequences of doing so are far heavier than in previous Grand Theft Autos, and the world does not forget.
Carrying something costs you a hand Pick up a bag during a job and it takes up a slot. Lucia is shown holding a shotgun one-handed while carrying one, rather than being able to bring it properly to bear.
You could finish it without killing anyone Because incapacitating is a real option and the story no longer forces kills on you, a full non-lethal playthrough is possible. In every previous entry the campaign made that impossible.
Cars come apart in specific places Vehicle destruction has been overhauled: the engine block, the fuel tank, the tyres and the driver are all separately worth shooting at, where Grand Theft Auto V mostly rewarded aiming at the driver.
Two weapons on you, the rest in the car The wheel carries two one-handed or two two-handed weapons at a time, plus a melee slot, a gadget slot and a throwable. Anything else lives in your vehicle and has to be fetched.
Pistols fire as fast as you can pull The fire-rate cap on semi-automatics in Grand Theft Auto V is gone. Quick-swapping between weapons on a dry magazine is also shown.
Kill cams and crash cams, both optional Particularly good shots and heavy crashes cut to a cinematic angle. Rockstar confirmed both can be switched off in the menu.
Cutscenes hand you partial control Nelson on the Extended Look's opening: the interconnectedness they pushed in Red Dead Redemption 2, brought further into Grand Theft Auto. You keep camera control and some player control through scenes that would previously have been a cutscene, including riding the lift.
The wanted system has been rebuilt around a simple idea: the police only know what somebody actually saw. Five separate things can be known about you, each is displayed, and each is separately fixable.
Five heat indicators Beneath the stars: CCTV footage, recognition of you as a couple, your outfits, your faces, and the weapons you used. Each has a counter: wipe the footage, split up, change clothes, change your appearance, change weapons.
The stars themselves have states Solid white means the police have direct line of sight. Blinking means you are breaking it. Hollow means they have been dispatched but have no description of you. Red means heat only. You have effectively lost them, and the minimap shows the perimeter they are patrolling.
The police are off the minimap The blips showing where officers are have been removed. The director's reason, in his own words, was that he wants the player looking at the screen to find the police rather than reading their positions off a map.
You can hear what was reported about you Police radio is audible, and it broadcasts the actual description: build, what you are wearing, whether you had a mask on. It is the same information the icons summarise, said aloud.
Each district has its own force Grand Theft Auto V sent the same vehicles every time. Here the response changes with where you are, down to rangers out in the wetlands.
Officers are briefed, and areas stay hot Dispatched police get specific information about what was reported and head for it. The scene stays marked on your map and searched for a while after you have gone, until it cools.
Six stars are back One star is meant to be shaken easily. Six is the old high-chaos getaway, back on the HUD for the first time since Chinatown Wars in 2009 rather than merely since Grand Theft Auto V capped out at five.
Two rings, and six stars searches everywhere Below six stars the map shows a dark circle over where you did it and a larger, paler search area around that, and getting outside the outer ring is what shakes them. Six stars is hard to reach and removes the rings entirely: at that point they look for you across the whole map.
Police cars are also an armoury You can get into the back of one and take body armour or something two-handed out of it, so a firefight that is going badly is also a place to resupply.
Bystanders take cover rather than scatter During a shootout on Vice Beach, TGG watched pedestrians tuck in behind a police car and stay there. In Grand Theft Auto V they would have run in every direction and kept running.
Pay and Spray is back, and so is unlocking it Both the resprays and the fence service that strips a tracker have to be unlocked as you go. Neither is available from the start, so early on you have fewer ways out than you will later.
The city fights your car At three stars and up, tight streets and heavy traffic make driving away hard without something quick. Rebuilt running, jumping and climbing make alleys and side streets a real alternative.
A hat will not do it Change your hair and the face indicator clears, but they still have your clothes, and glasses or a new hat are not enough. You need a full change of outfit, which is what the boot of your car is for. You can change in the vehicle.
A hat clears one icon and not the other IGN watched Jason buy a baseball cap in a convenience store. It removed the description icon, because the police no longer had his face right, and left the clothing icon exactly where it was. He was still wearing the same outfit.
Dispatch knows precisely what it knows Nelson's phrasing for it: their dispatch is extremely specific in what it knows. That is the whole design, since each thing the police have on you is separately displayed and separately fixable.
A mask stops the description forming Wear one during the crime and take it off as you leave and no description reaches the police at all, CCTV included.
A tracker can be taken out, for a price Steal a high-end car with one fitted and the police have your exact position, well beyond their normal search range. Garages will remove it, but it is not cheap.
Split up If the report says they are looking for a couple, the pair can separate to divide attention. Tell the other to run and take the heat yourself; you will get a text once they are clear.
Busted still exists Arrest either lead and the traditional screen appears, then you respawn, even if the other one is still running from the same scene.
Not everything has to escalate Some confrontations defuse without a shot. Aim at someone without firing and they may simply run. Story missions sometimes remove that option on purpose.
Four solid stars, the heat indicators beneath them, and the search area in red on the minimap.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
Money you have to actually go and get
Cash matters to the story this time. The main missions will stop and wait until you have raised a sum. That makes robbery, and the completely rebuilt business of stealing cars, part of the critical path rather than a diversion.
A corner store, both of them masked, cash already in hand.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
The story gates on capital Nelson confirmed there are points where missions stop until you have raised a certain amount. Rockstar wants what you do in the open world connected to the story rather than parallel to it.
Three tiers of robbery A corner store, then a jewellery store, then a bank. The larger ones appear on your map with an indication of what they might pay, so you can pick. Nelson says you can rob every single store you can walk into.
Solo or together “You can do these robberies by yourself or you can do them together. Making money this way off mission is an important part of the game.” Doing a job as a pair also grows their relationship.
Two inventories, and the second one unlocks Weapons in one, items in the other. Items arrive as the story progresses, the way Red Dead Redemption 2 doles out equipment: lock picks, tools for safes, something for hacking, binoculars. More tools means more ways into a job.
How a corner store actually goes Hold up the clerk and they may drop a key that opens the back office, where the safe is. On another run there was no key and the door came open with a lock pick instead. The clerk might comply, might run, might panic, or might produce a gun.
Greed against speed Blow a safe and you are out fast with damaged takings. Search the place for the combination and you leave with more, having given the police longer to arrive.
The map helps you case the job Put a marker on a target and the map shows it in three dimensions, with the potential haul attached. The jewellery store elrubius was shown listed somewhere between fifteen and several tens of thousands. You can also see whether the building has a back door and plan the entry around it.
Combinations are lying around to be found Their jewellery-store safe had several ways in. Nelson explained that searching the rooms turns up clues or the code itself, and they found it written on a note on an employee's desk.
Loot is physical, and picked up piece by piece Nothing dissolves into a counter. Gold bars, diamonds and cash are individual objects, lifted one at a time into a bag with a different animation for each. Robbing a till means taking the notes out of it note by note.
No two stores are laid out the same Not every store has a safe, some have a back way out and some do not, and the clerk might come at you rather than comply. Whether you stay to find the combination while the police are on their way is the decision the whole job turns on.
Prices do not move with the district Asked directly whether stolen goods fetch different amounts in different parts of the map, in the way Chinatown Wars handled drugs, Rockstar said no.
Cash on you is losable Two currencies: what is in your bank and what is in your pocket. Get killed or busted carrying cash and it is gone, so banking it at an ATM is a real decision.
Three counters, not two Bank and cash sit in the corner permanently, and a third appears when you are carrying loot: what is in the duffel bag. That last one is not money yet. It has to reach a fence before it becomes any.
Loot is bulky You can carry two duffel bags at once. Storing more means a vehicle, and capacity depends on what you brought: a motorcycle takes none at all, a car a couple, a van or truck more.
The car is the bottleneck Money from a big job goes into bags, the bags have a capacity, and your car holds two of them. Which raises the question of where a really large haul is supposed to go, and Kinda Funny did not get to see the end of that loop.
Fences buy what you take Separate fences for jewellery and for cars. A car fence does more than pay you: they hand out lists of vehicles to go and collect, they can strip trackers, and one may give up the entry code for a police impound.
What the two jobs actually paid In the session Davy Jones was shown, a corner store came to about $400. A car stolen in the same session sold on for about $10,000, which puts the two earners a long way apart.
Scan before you steal A phone app called WAINK reads a parked car and tells you what it is worth, what registering it as yours would cost, whether it is locked or alarmed, and whether it has a tracker.
Getting in is not starting it Nelson's distinction: hotwiring needs no tool, but not everything can be hotwired. A slim jim opens an older car quietly where smashing the glass sets off the alarm. A modern prestige car needs an electronic key cloner. Break the window all you like, it will not start without one.
So early on, you take them off drivers Until the key cloner arrives later in the story, the only way to get a high-end car is to pull someone out of one that is already running. Carjacking works exactly as it always has.
The same job from inside. Staff complying, heat indicators already lit.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
The car is a system now, not a vehicle
Fuel, electric charging, security tiers, damage that is separate from paintwork, and a boot worth opening on every car in the street. Almost all of this comes from one visit, and from a build that was already two months old when it was shown.
The two ways into an older car, offered side by side.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
Cars use fuel He spotted an unfamiliar map icon, asked what it was, and was told it was for charging electric vehicles, and that petrol exists too. The director framed it the way he framed everything else: an extra layer of immersion, never something designed to annoy you.
The gauge stays hidden until it matters There is no fuel bar sitting on screen while you drive. It surfaces only when you are low, which is the point at which it becomes information rather than clutter.
Getting in and starting it are two separate minigames An older car takes a slim jim to open, and then a second minigame to actually start it. Electric cars are taken with a phone app instead. Steal one and you inherit its charging problem along with it.
The right car for the job Taking a supercar off-road no longer works the way it did in Grand Theft Auto V, which Nelson raised himself. Every vehicle also has a weapon crate in it.
A passenger can throw you out Get into an occupied car and the person already in it is not simply along for the ride. They can put you out of it while you are driving.
Heavier off the line, faster at the top Cars carry more weight than in Grand Theft Auto V and a rear-wheel-drive car will not simply go when you bury the throttle from a standstill. Against that, top speeds are higher than Grand Theft Auto V's, so it is not straightforwardly the slower, heavier option.
Petrol stations also repair The same stop refuels and fixes the car. elrubius put it to Nelson that fuel might become tedious over a long game; the answer was that it is not meant to be, and that a tank lasts a good while.
Pulling someone out is a struggle, not a button You hold the button rather than press it, and the NPC resists. How much depends on the car and the person. Some hang on and get dragged, which last happened in Grand Theft Auto IV.
The customisation garage is a driving game Engine, brake calipers, suspension, wheels, rims. Kinda Funny's read was that it is not a token effort but the full depth you would expect from a game about driving. Preset kits are there too, for anyone who wants the look without the menus.
You do not buy safehouses You do not buy safehouses. They unlock as the story moves you through them, and Nelson said so plainly to TGG. What you can buy is garages. Kinda Funny were told the same from the other end, that you do not furnish an apartment either and that houses are not permanent fixtures, and that what you spend on instead is vehicles, clothes and weapons. Davy Jones came away with the opposite impression, that several properties would be purchasable, but two separate accounts now have the director saying otherwise.
Rockstar says the narrative is built to be played more than once. Small decisions accumulate; some large ones land immediately. Individual missions were shown with genuine alternatives inside them rather than one route dressed two ways.
A club floor, filled out rather than suggested.Rockstar Games, Extended Look
Choices of both sizes Minor decisions stack up into larger consequences; major ones change things at once. The whole thing is designed to support repeat playthroughs.
Missions branch inside themselves A tower block mission with several ways out. A mission where you choose whether to drive or to shoot from the passenger seat. A police chase that suggests the optimal route while leaving the others open.
Open world tied to character Rockstar has tried to connect what you do in the world to who these two people are, rather than keeping free roam and story in separate boxes.
Fewer fail screens Nelson's aim is that a mission going wrong becomes the next part of the mission rather than a restart. Where the narrative allows it, missions open up. Where it does not, they stay linear and he says so.
You are not meant to see all of it Nelson: they try to make sure you only see a given thing once, and that not everybody sees everything, so that people come away with different experiences. This one more than ever.
Lucia's ankle tag matters It plays a notable part in the story and is central to how the pair are brought together. Both have dense backstories, some of it stated outright and some only implied.
No gang war system was mentioned The Ultimate Edition copy refers to raiding a compound, which prompted the obvious question. Rockstar said nothing about gang systems either way.
The setting comes first, the satire comes last Nelson's account of the order: pick the place, in this case Miami and Florida, go there and meet as many people as possible, work out what experiences the player should have and who they should meet, and only then design a cast to carry them through it. Satire is not the starting point, it develops.
It surprised the director mid-demo Driving IGN past a car park, Jason offered Nelson a job he had not heard the line for himself. He changed his plan and took it, which is about as good a demonstration of emergent dialogue as a live demo could hope for.
The satire avoids the news The comedy runs throughout but deliberately steers clear of specific political issues, memes and contemporary slang, because a game this long in development would date badly otherwise. Rockstar also says it has to be careful with the jokes.
A short chapter, but an unusually specific one: Rockstar walked both visitors through menu options that answer questions people have been arguing about since the trailers.
The 3D minimap can be flattened It is three-dimensional by default and there is a conventional 2D option for anyone who does not get on with it.
The radio wheel is gone Stations are scrolled through one at a time instead. The same menu carries a vehicle tab, for putting a convertible roof down or opening the boot, and an on-demand tab holding podcasts.
A photo mode, but no Rockstar Editor You can stop and take a picture. The full director and creative suite that Grand Theft Auto V eventually shipped is not there.
The least glamorous chapter and one of the more useful ones. elrubius asked the questions people actually argue about: what hardware was that, what frame rate, and where is first person.
That was a base PS5 He assumed he was watching a PS5 Pro or a PC, asked twice, and was told both times it was a standard PlayStation 5. He compares the lighting to Cyberpunk with path tracing, which is not a comparison open-world console games usually invite.
Thirty frames a second, and not only on the base machine He noticed it was not running at sixty and asked whether that was specific to the base PS5. He was told it was not. Rockstar would not give him a figure for the PS5 Pro. He describes it as feeling fluid rather than heavy, as does MikeShowSha, who saw an older build in July and said he could not work out how it was managing thirty.
There is no first-person mode Grand Theft Auto V shipped one and it became many people's default. Asked directly, Nelson said they have not put one in “for now”. That is the current state, not a promise in either direction.
PS5 Pro is a question they declined Kinda Funny asked directly. Nelson: they are not ready to talk about PS5 Pro enhancements because they are still working on the game, and specifics would have to be followed up later. No discussion of performance modes or a forty-frame option either.
GTA Online got a wall Asked several times across the session and they would not move at all, beyond that they are not talking about it right now. Nothing has been said about an online mode either way.
It is not finished Small animation bugs surfaced during the session. The team spotted them as they happened and logged them. Worth remembering when reading any of these accounts: everyone was shown a build months from release, and Davy Jones puts his at roughly two months old already.
Prices below are the platform storefronts' own listings rather than retailer guesses. The game is not yet rated.
Out 19 November 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.Rockstar Games
Not yet rated The Xbox listing shows Rating Pending with a likely Mature 17+. That is a placeholder, not a rating. The ESRB has not published a final one. Every previous main-series entry has been Mature 17+, so it is unlikely to surprise anyone, but it has not happened yet.
GTA+ terms differ by platform PlayStation buyers redeem their free month by 31 March 2027; Xbox buyers within 180 days of ordering. It auto-renews at the normal price afterwards, one per account.
Sound effects through the controller's own speaker
Tempest 3D AudioTech
Near-instant load times from the PS5 SSD
Remote Play supported
Xbox Series X|S
Optimised for Xbox Series X|S
Xbox achievements
Xbox cloud saves
Xbox presence
Three dates, two delays
“Why was it delayed” is one of the most-asked questions about this game and is usually answered with speculation. Both moves were announced by Rockstar directly.
5 December 2023
Trailer 1 arrives. Rockstar dates the game 2025, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
“these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve”
Every line above has one of these attached
Nobody outside Rockstar has played this game. Six of the sources
below are people who were shown it, across sessions staggered from
July to late August and deliberately made different from one another,
so that between them they would surface more than one trailer could
hold. That is why their accounts diverge, why some of them contradict
each other, and why the badges matter. Two of them were told Rockstar
invited exactly four creators; five creator accounts exist. Nobody has
explained that, and it is not this page's place to guess. All of it is
the best anyone has, and none of it is a specification.
28 August 2026 · Davy Jones and Flow Games · A live rewatch of the Extended Look, with Davy Jones reading from his own transcript of the interview with the game's director. In Portuguese.
28 August 2026 · Davy Jones and Flow Games · New Rockstar screenshots gone through on stream, with answers from the director's interview alongside them. In Portuguese.
27 August 2026 · elrubiusOMG · Nearly three hours of player-directed gameplay at Rockstar North with Rob Nelson. One of four creators invited worldwide. In Spanish.
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