GTA 6 – Lucia seems like a star in the making (Picture: Rockstar Games)

Rockstar’s GTA 6 trailer looks better than anyone hoped, but will they put as much effort into improving the action as they do the graphics?

After registering 50 million views in just nine hours, the GTA 6 trailer will almost certainly end up as the most viewed video game trailer of all time, if not the most viewed entertainment trailer ever – including movies and TV. After all, GTA 5 is the most successful entertainment release in human history and the first impressions for GTA 6 seem nothing but positive.

Rockstar’s money and expertise guaranteed that the graphics would be state-of-the-art but what was seen in the trailer still managed to surpass all expectations. The camera pan up to the beach skyline, the shot of the Florida Keys equivalent, the bit with the bikini-clad woman giving the camera a twirl atop a skyscraper… all could easily be mistaken for real-life footage.

But while the visuals were fantastic, they were always expected to be very good, so it’s debatable how much we’ve really learned. In gameplay terms it’s not clear that anything fundamental has changed but there some important firsts in the trailer: a female protagonist and a sympathetic storyline.

It’s not just that Grand Theft Auto has not had any female protagonists before but that in its 26-year history, spanning multiple sequels and spin-offs, it’s barely had a single memorable female character of any kind. And no, whatever minor character you’re thinking of that probably dies before the end of the game, doesn’t count.

What was encouraging about the GTA 6 trailer is not only the focus on Lucia but the fact that she seemed to be acting like an actual human being, snarky with her prison supervisor but also quietly vulnerable and distraught. She was taking the lead in the action scenes, but she could also be seen speaking to her boyfriend in a believable and endearing manner.

You wouldn’t call it romantic, but it felt more real than anything in GTA 5 or any of the other games – even Red Dead Redemption 2 and the perpetually genial Arthur Morgan. And realism is, after all, the primary concern of most GTA fans. More in terms of physics and geographical detail, but if Rockstar is trying to make the game’s story as authentic as the rest of the experience, that’s very welcome.

The story scenes only add up to a few seconds of footage but what’s impressive is that the game seems to be able to mix this more nuanced storytelling together with its traditionally puerile humour and on-the-nose satire.

Rockstar has been working on GTA 6 for an awfully long while and it’s clear that time has been used well, with a trailer that felt tuned to perfection, in terms of showing fans what they wanted to see.

From alligator attacks to a in-game version of TikTok, the trailer had it all but the one thing it couldn’t demonstrate is the gameplay and it’s hard to know how optimistic to be about that. Rockstar’s incredible success must make it very difficult to take criticism seriously but on the list of accomplishments for GTA and Red Dead Redemption the action and gameplay is very near the bottom.

GTA 6 – the best-looking trailer ever (Picture: Rockstar Games)

It’s reached an acceptable level of competence in GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 but it’s still never actively good and given Rockstar has had 10 years to improve it, in GTA Online, you’ve got to question whether it will change all that much in GTA 6.

Looking in from the outside, it must seem odd to praise a game that has such unremarkable gameplay, but that has never been a prerequisite for gaming’s most popular titles. Fortnite isn’t an especially good shooter, FIFA had several sub-par entries, and Call Of Duty is almost unique in promoting its 60fps gameplay as one of its key selling points.

For Grand Theft Auto, the primary appeal is the freedom and the realism; a violent sandbox in which you can live out every gangster fantasy imaginable. To many fans it’s the ultimate video game simply because it allows you to experience everything an action title could allow, in terms of shooting, driving, and exploring. The idea that you can go anywhere and do anything has been at the heart of the franchise’s appeal for decades.

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GTA 6 is out in 2025 and no one will be more interested to find out the actual date than other game publishers, since they know it will be a death wish to release anything even remotely similar any time close to it. GTA 6 is exactly what fans were hoping for and in terms of graphic and storytelling there’s a very good chance it will be better than expected.

Whether it will play as good as it looks remains to be seen, but history teaches us that it doesn’t matter whether it does or not.

GTA 6 – better than expected (Picture: Rockstar Games)

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Rockstar’s GTA 6 trailer looks better than anyone hoped but will they put as much effort into improving the action as they do the graphics?