On Dec. 4, 2023, the internet exploded with the long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI trailer.
GTA VI is wildly anticipated, with the BBC stating that using this term is a “great understatement” regarding the gaming community who have awaited its release.
This official trailer marks a significant announcement made by the studio behind the GTA series Rockstar Games.
To say that the expectations for GTA VI are high would downplay the series’ successes.
The last game the franchise released, GTA V, is the second-best-selling game of all time, trailing only Minecraft.
At the time of my writing, 190 million copies are reported by Venture Beat to have been sold.
Despite the game being over a decade old, it still attracts new players – as demonstrated by the number of copies sold.
The title has multi-player appeal, and this area of the game is still regularly updated. A new GTA V online multiplayer update was even announced a week after the initial GTA VI trailer was released.
An acclaimed story mode also helped GTA V.
GTA V takes place in the fictional ‘Los Santos,’ a no-so-stubble parody of real-world Los Angeles.
The characters and environment the player interacts with are equally phony, oblivious, and funny. Rockstar Games has appeared picked up on this resonation, as GTA VI is set to occur in a location suspiciously similar to real-life Florida.
The trailer contains ridiculous scenes featuring alligators in swimming pools, gratuitously tattooed criminals and hammer-wielding locals.
The revelation that many of these scenes are borrowed from real-life events, as reported by Perfect Score, adds to the absurdity of the location.
According to Game Rant, Rock star’s last major release, Red Dead Redemption II, also broke into the upper echelon of best-selling games as it hit all-time records on Steam.
The GTA VI trailer suggests a similar focus on the single-player gaming experience. Interestingly, it appears that a female will star as a lead protagonist for the first time in the series’ history.
For years, there has been discussions in online forums, particularly Reddit, anticipating GTA VI.
The game must be genuinely spectacular to reach the level of hype it has already garnered.
For years, thousands of YouTubers and internet personalities have debated (and often faked) information regarding the game.
GTA VI has a reported budget of between 1 and 2 billion dollars according to Dexerto, which would make it the most expensive video game ever made.
With how talked about the game has been, a final product that’s anything less than perfect will likely be harshly criticized by the gaming community.
Rockstar’s largely derided attempt to remaster GTA’s prior entries is evidence of this, a user on Reddit’s r/pc-gaming community commenting that the company’s response to criticism was “full of lies.”
The trailer only says that the new game will be expected in 2025 without specific dates.
How fans will receive it, however, remains to be seen.
: GTA VI trailer stuns and promotes discussion