GTA VI Trailer 1

 It happened.

You don't need me to tell you judging from the 56 million views that the trailer was sitting at after the first 12 hours. The majority of which (42 million) came from the very first hour that this thing was out despite the fact that the trailer was due a 9 am reveal the very next day. Turns out someone leaked a 720p garbled version on Twitter which incensed Rockstar enough to drop their pristine 4k masterpiece edition early and make sure everyone saw it like that. Because Rockstar already went through the song-and-dance of people seeing the game in it's unfinished build state and remarking 'The textures look ugly!' and 'assets are being recycled'- as though they were looking at the finished thing. Long live the immortal moron who said, with his chest out, something to the avail of 'visuals are usually the first thing finished in game development'; a bigger load of barnacles on the Internet is rarely seen. But with all that behind us we can bask in the truly incredible visual treat which is Grand Theft Auto VI; the game that is coming out in over a year. Goddamn.

And of course the trailer has blown up the entire world for being one of the finest looking products ever to be made in this little medium of ours. So it should be. Rumours have it, and these are rumours from a time of great leakage which simultaneously opens up the possibility of proof whilst providing a vast potentiality for lies, that the budget for this game is between the ranges of 1-2 billion. Which would make it easily the most expensive game ever made and probably the most expensive entertainment product overall. But when you think about it, that kind of does make sense. Grand Theft Auto grosses about a billion a year when you add up everything, so if Rockstar want this to do one better it only makes sense that you'll throw a big chunk of those earnings into getting everything to it's top most. Graphics, sound, physics, animation- hey, maybe we'll even get an improvement to shooting- wouldn't that be a nice gift under the old Christmas tree?

And of course if anyone needed the confirmation we got that too; the leaks were absolutely truthful and indeed we shall be playing Lucia, the very first real female protagonist in a Grand Theft Auto game, and presumably also her boyfriend Jacob. Lucia looks stunningly realistic, and just plain stunning in a few shots, and Jacob looks kind of like a younger and less rugged Arthur Morgan. (I can't be the only one who notices that.) There's very little to go on this Bonnie and Clyde duo so far but I can't wait until the personality led trailers start dropping and the world can begin to get invested in the lives of these characters before they turn on each other in the third act and have to face off. Which, I can't say for sure that's going to happen- but this is GTA, and the basis of the story is Bonnie and Clyde- what else possibly could happen?

So far the king of the footage has been the world of Vice City (and surrounding settlements) itself and indeed, things have changed a lot since 2002. Florida Man is a main character in the circus that is virtual social media- lovingly recreated to depict the TikTok generation and the alligator wrestling populace in one mish mash of chaos. It would seem that interaction with Social Media is going to be a sticking point, at least from what we can see so far, so some speculate this might take over from the simulated TV stations and online news sites from previous games. Which makes a lot of sense. Why read about your exploits on the news when you can see a post of the store robbery you just committed filmed by a random bystander? There's so many prime opportunities for Rockstar to insert immersion points within everything we've seen already!

The biggest eye opener has been the return of believability. From the creator to the consumer. In that I mean according to the fine, and very critical, folks over at Digital Foundry- the insane beauty of these graphics are indicative of the running product and not just pre-processed exaggerations. They have a giant report on the footage detailing the existence of minuscule hair artefacts that would be easily swept away in a pre-render or if it were running on a suped-up 'trailer computer'- and there's even apparently proof it isn't running natively 4k but at 2k- much more achievable on the modern generation of consoles it's designed to run on. Rockstar have never been ones to pull the bait and switch on us, but if there was ever a time to doubt it was here- with a game that looks so stunning that even with lightly stylised characters people are calling it better looking than real life. But apparently it's true to life, as insane as that is to consider.

Such magic probably shouldn't be a surprise, however, given with that insane budget it makes sense that the team don't need to rely on other cheat-sheets to good looking graphics that the rest of the industry follows. Those costly techniques with their heavy limitations and performance hits. Rockstar are innovating and reinventing the wheel from scratch- they've put together simulator technology so complex that outside professionals can't even compare it to anything else on the market. As the biggest piece of entertainment media- Grand Theft Auto 6 is in the business of making the rest of the world sit down and show them how it's done. It's incredible because most other developers suffer those diminishing returns of being the 'industry leaders'. Ubisoft briefly told every other company exactly what style of game they would be copying for the next two years with Far Cry 3- but they slipped into the 'catch-up' role shortly afterwards and have been stuck there ever since. Rockstar have never played catch-up. They've always redefined the limits of the games industry. And it looks like once again, even just technically, they've rocked up with lessons to teach.

I only wish the game weren't so damned far away! 2025 is a lifetime from today, and I'll just bet it's going to be late 2025. If it were in the early months, they would have bragged about it! Just the other day we saw that comment thread on 'Tw-X' wherein Kojima lamented the loss of the vast wait between announcement and launch- characteristically romanticising the period of dreamlike anticipation fuelling the wonder of dreams. We stopped liking that because the expectations they built were always underwhelmed by the (Ubisoft) product. (Okay it's not just Ubisoft who disappointed. But they seemed to do it consistently. Still do, actually.) But it seems he wasn't talking to us but destiny itself, because here comes Rockstar lining up their two year wait mere days afterwards. Is this why Kojima got black-listed at Konami? For being annoyingly right about the near future? (No, I know the real reason. I just find it funny to think of him as the 'Kassandra' of the gaming world.)

So here we rot in our inequity. Forlorn and disgraced. Knowing of a brighter, stunning world of unimaginable debauchery, violence and corrupting freedom- but being unable to grasp it. Like toddlers reaching our stubby arms between the bars of our playpen, enraptured by the golden wonder of the summer streaks through the window blinds. Years it will take. Years! Honestly, I would have preferred if they'd never showed us what we could be playing, at least until it was a little bit closer. What the hell am I supposed to do now, Rockstar? Move to Miami and steal cars to replicate the experience? Because when I do exactly that, you best know I'm going to blame you when the Florida-man hunting media comes fishing for my story! You know, provided the police don't immediately open fire the second they see a mixed-race kid in a stolen car. Or near a parked car. Or at all. You know what? Maybe I won't go to Miami.