(Credit: Rockstar Games)
After years of speculation and leaks, Rockstar Games has finally given us the first official look at Grand Theft Auto VI in the form of a trailer. We’re sure to have a lot of questions between now and the game's release in 2025, but so far we like what we’re seeing. Specifically, GTA VI’s fluorescent, vaporwave-like aesthetic teases a glitzy and grimy return to Vice City—a return that's nearly two decades in the making.
Revisit These Rockstar Games Classics
Initially, the GTA VI trailer reminds us of Cyberpunk 2077. Both games present a shiny, colorful vision of future cities as seen through a 1980s lens. Whereas Cyberpunk 2077 is an action epic full of sword fights and magical hacking powers, Grand Theft Auto is a nihilistic crime comedy that cares more about packing its realistic locations with tiny details rather than massively raising the stakes.
As a result, GTA VI's pastel-colored urban playground looks less like a dystopian hellscape and more like a world inspired by vaporwave, the semi-ironic nostalgic digital art movement. Like vaporwave, GTA VI's graphics represent a collapsed society that would rather look cool, chill out, and laugh about its woes than despair them.
The GTA VI trailer, while brief, confirms major details that back up the picture it paints. The game is set in Vice City, a fictionalized version of Miami first seen in 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. (That game was a series high point, and a title I highlight in my history book Video Game of the Year.) Part of what made Vice City special was its strong visual style. Set in 1980s Florida, it was a sunny, drug-fueled, rainbow fever dream packed with palm trees, speed boats, and a synth soundtrack that hung over your violent acts like a postcard background.
GTA VI has 1980s vibes, but is very much set in the current day, an age of a different type of excess.
GTA VI appears to carry this vibe forward. Compared with GTA IV’s grim Liberty City or GTA V's vapid Los Santos, GTA VI embraces its ersatz Florida setting with alligators, mud wrestling, and strong Latin influences. Based on the trailer, I picture a game that’s a neon nightclub that never ends. In contrast with the many generic open-world games that have saturated the market, Grand Theft Auto's cities (like Red Dead Redemption 2’s Wild West frontiers) feel handcrafted and elegantly designed. GTA VI gives us hope that this legacy will continue.
Although GTA VI looks like a spiritual successor to Vice City, it has the chance to forge its own visual identity. Vice City was essentially a take on Brian de Palma's Scarface, complete with cocaine and machine guns. It was a game about excess set in a decade of excess. GTA VI has 1980s vibes, but is very much set in the current day, an age of a different type of excess.
In the trailer, characters constantly record viral shenanigans on their phone for social media. We see police body cam footage as cops try to bust criminals. It almost resembles found footage at times. Combine that with hyper-realistic visuals tailored for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles, and GTA VI’s aesthetic promises a hypnotic blend of retro references with modern tech.
There’s still plenty more to discuss about the Grand Theft Auto VI trailer, from its playable female coprotagonist (Lucia) to its apparent criminal couple love story plot. However, without any gameplay to analyze, all we can explore is the mood that the trailer sets.
And right now, Grand Theft Auto VI’s aesthetic makes us want play the Miami Vice soundtrack and Floral Shoppe by Vektroid on a loop until the game comes out in 2025.
In the meantime, check out the best games you can play right now on your PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
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