What Can We Expect From GTA 6's Trailer?

Before we start, I need to explain that everything you’re about to read is a guess. There are a lot of so-called insiders out there who claim to know intimate details of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rockstar's upcoming 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Grand Theft Auto 6 release rollout, but very few of them know anything at all. This is not my attempt to join these pretenders. Instead, this is a speculative analysis of what GTA 6's trailer might look like, based on the reveal trailers for GTA 4, GTA 5, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Red Dead Redemption 2.

As a result, we won't be diving into how big the game will be (very big), how long it will take to beat (very long), or how good the graphics will look (very good). 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Rockstar's patented RAGE system could mean GTA 6 blows even RDR2's technological might away, but that's a matter for another article. The one I just linked to, in fact. Instead, we're looking at the sort of spectacle we might see, so let's dive in.

GTA 6's trailer has some big shoes to fill whatever happens

Rocksဣtar Will Always Be The Kings Of V🎶ideo Game Trailers

How do🐭es Rockstar still make me feel excited about games I’ve played a dozen times before?

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The first thing you notice when you search GTA 4's reveal trailer is that it says it was uploaded 16 years ago. Then you break your hip, yell at the kids on your lawn, remember that music was better in the good old days, and hit play. It's a lot slower than I remember, showing a time lapse of the city, some cars driving, some people walking, and Nico's ship arriving at the dock. It's a confident trailer - it knows GTA means guns and violence, so it doesn't need to show you them. It's a clear attempt to say 'we are telling a serious story', while letting the audience fill in the gaps themselves. A great trailer, but not an exciting one - can GTA 6 afford such confidence after so long away?

Moving on to GTA 5's reveal trailer (12 years ago, hip breaks again, et cetera), there's a noticeable graphical improvement, as well as a switch to a more saturated colour palette. Much like GTA 4's, it's very narrative focused. A voiceover from Michael describes the American dream as we see aspirational clips: sports cars, beach houses, golfing. Michael talks about his desires to retire early and leave a comfortable life as a happy, easy-going father, but halfway through, there's a switch-up.

Michael says "you know how it is", and suddenly he's wielding a machine gun, kicking down a door in the middle of a heist. From here, the aspirational images are undercut by the dichotomy of life in LA - homeless people begging, Skid Row, noxious oil fields, and sex workers on dangerous street corners, mixed in with private jets and diamond rings. I don't think GTA 5's satire of modern excess got all the way there, but it's a trailer that leads with its politics while still letting you know you'll get to shoot a lot of people. You'd also get the impression from this game that you only play as Michael, not Trevor and Franklin too - that's worth bearing in mind for GTA 6.

Then there's Red Dead Redemption 2's reveal trailer (seven years ago, I guess that's a bit more like it?), which is another major visual step up. It begins with sweeping vistas of the wilderness, showcasing the natural beauty as well as a fairly on-the-nose reference to Manifest Destiny with a steam train carving through America as a herd of buffalo run alongside it. We hear Arthur Morgan’s voice telling us to "run and don't look back", while he stands ominously before burning crops with a rifle in his hand. We cut to the thunder of hooves as the gang race across the flats with dust clouds behind them, and then it's over.

Here's the common points between all three - each of them looked better than the last by a wide margin, each of them were between 60 and 90 seconds, they were narratively driven and mostly nonviolent, and none of them show gameplay. Given a decent chunk of GTA 6 gameplay has leaked, Rockstar may change tack here and decide to give us a blast of their more polished highlights. It may also transform the confidence of peaceful storytelling into bombastic arrogance, showing off just how spectacular explosions look these days while hurling it’s usually striking satire to the side.

It's strange to say that the lesson we can take from the other recent (16 years, we're all slowly decaying) trailers is that GTA 6 might not be anything like them, but if you asked most people to come up with their ideal GTA 6 trailer, quiet teases of the narrative satire wouldn't be high up the list. A combination of leaks and the ever-growing release cycles making these sorts of huge, era-defining releases few and far between means GTA 6 will be dangled in front of an audience with different expectations to the audiences that greeted the last three Rockstar games.

If I had to guess though (and that is why I'm here, after all), I think Rockstar will stay the course. I think the first tease we get from GTA 6 will be a little smaller than we're expecting, a little smarter. It won't say 'we're making a video game' with car chases and shootouts and fiery plane crashes. It will say 'we're making GTA', the same way it always tells us. It will hint at the story, at the characters, and play its cards very close to its chest even if it has a mittful of aces. It won't be the GTA 6 we expect... yet. But in the long run, that's probably a good thing.