After more than a decade of speculation, our first official glimpse of Grand Theft Auto VI is here.
The trailer for the next instalment of the best-selling video game franchise was shared by developer Rockstar Games a day earlier than planned, due to a leak. It confirms the game will be released in 2025, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Featuring gameplay footage, it also confirms long-standing rumours that GTAVI will be set in Vice City, the series' take on Miami, Florida, and has a female protagonist — a first for the series. The trailer sees Lucia and a male partner on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque crime spree captured via social media live-streams.
If you're not a gamer, it can be hard to understand the magnitude of the announcement. But it has been more than a decade since Grand Theft Auto V was released for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2013 – an exorbitant wait, especially with other blockbuster gaming franchises like Call of Duty, Super Mario and Final Fantasy averaging a new release every two or three years.
In that time, fans have filled the time with immense hype and speculation. The road to GTAVI has been windy, filled with conspiracies, leaks, company overhauls and an FBI investigation — just about as dramatic as the series itself.
--What is Grand Theft Auto?
Grand Theft Auto is a long-standing video game series that launched in 1997, where players take control of a criminal on a series of missions through a city, including car-jacking, bank robberies and murder. It's created by Rockstar Games, a company with 2000+ workers across studios in America, the UK, India and more.
The series is positioned as a violent satire of modern-day America: a ruthless world of violence and gangs, featuring parodies of pop culture, politics and advertising.
According to ABC Gamer's Harry Jun, it was 2001's GTAIII that established the series as a cultural and technological force, creating an open world that allowed players to roam freely through its city setting in addition to completing the game's missions.
"That was GTA's foray into the cultural zeitgeist," he says, "with people talking about a video game for better or worse — about whether it caused violence in society, or it being an amazing experience and the next level of realism. It was almost like watching someone in real life."
That realism has made GTA one of the most controversial video game series, criticised repeatedly for glamorising violence and criminal activity. In 2014, Target Australia and K-Mart removed GTAV from stores, after more than 40,000 people signed an online petition.
But the series remains incredibly popular and acclaimed: GTAV is regarded as one of the best video games of all time. And after selling more than 190 million titles — thanks to re-releases for the two successive generations of Xbox and PlayStation consoles — it is also the second-highest selling game of all time, too.
This June, Rockstar's parent company Take-Two Interactive revealed that the franchise has generated more than US$8.33 billion revenue in the decade since GTAV's release.
--The endless theories
Fan theorising over GTAVI began shortly after the release of GTAV, when Rockstar North's then-president confirmed they were throwing around ideas for the next game.
With the company tight-lipped on details, gamers have filled in the blanks themselves with a litany of Reddit threads, YouTube explainers and speculation. Most recently, gamers analysed an image tweeted by Rockstar Games featuring a waning moon, with users trying to ascertain a trailer date by comparing it to 2023's lunar phases.
"Gamers love to solve puzzles," says Jun. "There's a culture of Easter Eggs in games, of decades of developers coding secrets that aren't part of the main game, but reward discovery and experimentation."
Some conclusions, whether by design or accident, have proven to be true. It's unclear whether a beach towel in GTAV reading "I <3 VC" was actively a clue to the game's Vice City setting, but fans pointed toward this as proof. Jun says Rockstar are particularly "cheeky" when it comes to teasing gamers.
"They'll put in little clues that don't confirm anything but are fun to find," he says.
"In a trailer for GTA Online, random numbers featured that viewers thought were GPS co-ordinates, and when they put them into Google Maps, it was an overhead view of a road in Virginia that looked like the letters VI. And everyone was like 'GTAVI CONFIRMED'. But it means nothing!"
At the same time, it seems that Rockstar did signpost the GTAVI trailer's original release date via an in-game T-shirt called "ONEDAYWILLREVEALALL", added to GTA Online earlier this year.
--The biggest leak in video game history
In September 2022, Rockstar Games was hacked, with GTAVI footage and data posted online in what was described as one of the biggest leaks in video game history.
More than 90 separate video clips of early development footage, showcasing animation tests, level layouts and gameplay were leaked, showing the now-confirmed GTAVI's Vice City setting and the female protagonist.
The footage was uploaded to GTAForums by user "teapotuberhacker", who later added they wanted to "negotiate a deal" with Rockstar over the return of unreleased data. They alleged this included source code, which, if leaked, could result in pirated or knockoff versions of the game.
The FBI investigated the hack, which was linked to a similar breaches at Microsoft, Uber, digital banking group Revolut and AI company Nvidia.
In the end, 18 and 17-year-old members of a hacking group called Lapsus$ were found guilty of the spree by a UK court.
--Pressure, internal changes and dreaded crunch
During the production of GTA, Rockstar has faced an internal cultural overhaul and senior-level reshuffle.
Ahead of the release of Rockstar's 2018 game Red Dead Redemption 2, the company was accused of an inappropriate, "frat-house" culture, as well as extensive unpaid overtime by current and former employees, who alleged months of 55-to-60 hour, six-day weeks to finish the game for release.
This period of immense workload is known in the gaming industry as "crunch", and open-world games like Rockstar's are particularly brutal, given the hundreds of hands needed for play-tests and to fix any issues.
"Deadlines aren't approached in a practical way," says Jun.
"Pushing the release date will lose money, so they just burn out their employees. But I think that's starting to change … the bigger cultural issues will take longer."
Following RDR2's release, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser and GTA's main writer left the company, with several more executives since departing. In 2020, gaming site Kotaku interviewed 15 current or recent employees, who spoke of improved working conditions.
To reduce crunch, it's reported that GTAVI will launch with a smaller game map, which will be expanded via regular updates.
"It's taken 10 years," says Jun. "I'm hoping they went with a slow development to push out the next big one."
And with GTAVI's trailer featuring a vague 2025 release date, it's a sign Rockstar isn't in a rush. In the meantime, the trailer offers plenty of footage to scour for clues.
Story By: ABC Arts / By Jared Richards
Original Story link: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-05/tracing-the-10-year-wait-for-gta6/103189880
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