Key Insights from the Grand Theft Auto VI Extended Look

New Delhi, India Aug 28, 2026 ALN: It’s safe to say Grand Theft Auto VI is the most anticipated game ever. Thirteen years after the last entry in the series, rampant fervor and speculation about what features the game will include have ratcheted up. Today, Rockstar Games divulged more details through an exclusive livestream event on Netflix called Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look. The spectacle was a 26-minute-long collection of gameplay, cutscenes, and game mechanics.

And boy, does this sure look like a GTA game. The trailer featured Lucia and Jason, the two main characters, driving around Vice City, GTA’s fictional version of Miami. It highlighted all kinds of violence and shenanigans your characters can engage in, and it looks good doing it.

The livestream follows a week of gameplay leaks and story spoilers by the hacker group Cyberleek, which Rockstar called “heartbreaking.” A bevy of other details about the game emerged just a day before the event in a story published by the British magazine Dazed. The piece chronicles the extraordinary level of detail and effort Rockstar has put into GTA VI, including how players control the characters and the unprecedented realism that Rockstar put into its satirical sandbox version of Miami.

It’s bound to be a massive game; today’s reveal shows just how much of a monster it will be. Here are the big takeaways from the livestream.

It Sure Is Pretty

GTA VI is gorgeous. The cityscapes, nightclubs, and lush natural parks shown all seem vibrant and awash in color.

There is a noticeable difference between cutscenes and gameplay, though, as the gameplay clips looked a little flatter and more desaturated than the cinematic cutscenes. That’s kind of a nitpick, though it’s worth noting that in the very first scene—in the dark basement of a crack house—the lighting is so dim it washes out the features of several Black characters around the table.

You Play as 2 Characters Simultaneously

The player can control two characters, Jason and Lucia, a Bonnie-and-Clyde-esque couple who seem to be working out some lingering tension in their relationship as they go about their various criminal activities.

The voice acting for the main characters and other non-playable characters (NPCs) feels tightly written, though that’s based on the select clips Rockstar showed. According to Dazed, the relationship between the characters can change over time, and the player’s actions can affect how that plays out. Keep that in mind if you’re hoping for a particular ending.

GTA VI offers a plethora of options for changing the two main characters’ appearances. Eating too much or too little food affects their weight. Working out can make them swole. The Extended Look also showed off characters eating and working out in minigames. It was a feature in 2004’s GTA San Andreas and in a smaller way in GTA V. Now, that reactivity will be much more fully realized in GTA VI.

Maybe Don’t Hit and Run

The NPCs in the game appear much more responsive and interactive than in prior games. According to Dazed, Rockstar has an entire studio in Los Angeles dedicated to working on NPC pedestrian behavior alone.

In the Extended Look, gameplay segments with car chases pointedly avoided streamrolling over pedestrians. But NPCs wore yoga outfits, rode scooters, and seemed to have more personality than the cut-and-paste crowds of past games.

Driving seems greatly improved. When driving, you have a minimap that looks like an actual GPS map guiding you where to go. A car chase saw the main characters running from the police. The player can switch between Lucia and Jason and choose to either drive or shoot at the pursuers. Shooting out tires can cause a car to flip, crash into the sidewalk, and cause environmental destruction.

At one point, a character also body-slams a cop through a wall, which hints at potentially more destructive environments indoors as well. GTA games have been iffy about destructible environments before, though. Sometimes in GTA V you can easily crash through a large light pole but then get instantly stopped by a volleyball net. So we’ll see how reactive everything gets.

So Much Room for Activities

Vice City and the surrounding areas seem absolutely massive. It’s also fully Florida, allowing your characters to fanboat around the Everglades, kayak on the rivers, or scuba dive and jet ski in the Gulf.

One scene from the trailer shows Lucia accidentally kidnapping a livestreaming influencer, then carrying him along through a car chase from the police. Many of the characters use phones and communicate via text. It’s clear that GTA VI has some satirical takes on social media, but we’ll see how relevant it feels in a constantly shifting era.

You Can Pet the Dog

A dog is in at least one scene of the game. Can you pet it? Yes. Yes, you can.

User-Generated Content

In 2023, Rockstar bought the modding marketplace Cfx and reworked it into an official place to share and purchase user-created mods for the game. That service, along with GTA Online’s Rockstar Missions, is expected to enhance the gaming experience significantly.