I was never interested in Grand Theft Auto. I get it, I was in middle school when GTA 3 came out. I understood why half my gaming friends were obsessed. I was a nerd, though. Even in my group of nerd friends, I was the nerd. When they were all yapping about World of Warcraft during lunch every day, I was stewing and playing Ace Attorney on my DS, wishing for a better tomorrow. Normie games like GTA just didn’t have the sauce, to me. Why do I care about cars and shooting cops when I could be practicing my shoryuken inputs or steering an airship towards the Iifa Tree?
Source: Capcom
Mostly, I’m a story guy. I want my games to have some interesting reason that compels me to pick up the controller in the first place. That’s why I like RPGs so much. And if it’s not about the story, it’s something like a fighting game that keeps my brain active in a way that goes beyond just shooting at people and listening to fart jokes and Fox News parodies on the in-game car radios. And Great Value Scarface storytelling ain’t it either, you know what I mean? So yeah, years and years of Rockstar Games’ brand of edgy, bottom-shelf satire and movie rip-off storytelling never appealed to me, and still doesn’t. Or didn’t.
GTA 6 is stepping up to the plate now and, on May 6, a new trailer dropped to make up for the release date delay. It didn’t make up for all the garbage clickbait headlines about fake release date news making my news writing gig annoying up until this point, but it was nice to have something real to write about. Despite my apathy for the series in the first place, anyway. But much to my surprise, while watching the trailer I found myself actually kind of interested in what was playing out in front of me. The first trailer for GTA 6 went in one eye and out the other a year ago, but something about this one unexpectedly grabbed my attention.
The pitch, in a nutshell, is fairly simple. Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos are a couple struggling to get by in Leonida, the GTA equivalent to Florida and state housing the famous Vice City. Jason grew up in poverty and briefly tried to escape via military service, but ended up back where he started, running drugs to get by. Lucia, originally from Liberty City, is getting out of jail after being locked up for some kind of physical altercation involving her family. Jason picks Lucia up, and there’s immediate chemistry. Then there’s a smash cut to making out, so the chemistry makes sense. What follows looks to be a tried and true rags to criminal riches story, but one grounded by a couple living in the dregs of the United States and trying to get out by any means necessary. A Bonnie and Clyde story for the COVID generation.
It’s a simple hook, but an effective one, especially for a series I tend to associate with the more toxic tendencies of the gaming community. And while it’s cool, I’m not just saying this because Lucia is GTA’s first fully-realized (aka non-mute character select option) woman lead. Can’t wait to hear about how GTA is woke now, but I digress. GTA has always felt over the top and performative, in the same empty-headed way as something like The Boondock Saints, always nodding to greater works in similar spaces but mistaking homage and pizazz for storytelling. Here, just having a pair of characters in a relationship struggling to escape a crumbling slice of Americana feels like a realistic, relatable scenario that justifies doing the driving cars and shooting bullets thing. A simple relationship between two realistic people, not an aging rich guy who hates his family or a dude who stuffs bodies into bathtubs for laughs, not a walking trope, not a Scarface stand-in. It’s all vibes at the moment from a pair of trailers, but this time I’m feeling what I’m seeing.
Source: Rockstar Games
Like I said, I don’t go here. I don’t have a long history with Grand Theft Auto besides having no choice but to hold my tongue and watch my friends play if I wanted to have a social life in the circles I was given back in the PS2 days. These games never did anything for me, and their weak sauce storytelling was often the first on a long list of reasons. But watching today’s trailer caught me off guard, and now I feel myself wondering if this could be the one I show up for and get something out of. A simple, grounded story pitch is all I really have to go on, but that’s uncharted territory for a series I haven’t felt any differently about in over two decades. For all I know, GTA 6 will show up on May 26, 2026, and just be Grand Theft Auto again. But for the first time, I’m open to being wrong.
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replyLucas White posted a new article, I don't play Grand Theft Auto, but GTA 6's story pitch has my attention
