The second trailer of ‘GTA VI’ looks crazy, and is a sample of how good it feels to go against the industry

The wait until May 26, 2026 will be made long. In a strange ad, Rockstar confirmed a few days ago that the release date of ‘GTA VI’ was delayed from an indefinite moment of this 2025 at the end of May next year. It is something that has several readings, but one of them was that they would soon launch a new trailer that, finally, would set the final launch date and, announcing the delay in advance, would cushion the blow.

This has been. The company has just launched the second trailer of ‘Grand Theft Auto VI’ and … is overwhelming. If the first launched in 2013 already allowed us to theorize whether it was something moving in real time or was a pre-control scene, this second trailer points to tour the same path.

And the reason is that there are scenes of ‘GTA VI’ that are a real madness.

‘GTA VI’ will squeeze a decaffeinated generation

First of all, I have to clarify that we can only judge the visual quality of the game with the means that we have available so far. To perform deeper analysis, we will have to waitat least, at the moment we have GamePlay scenes itself, but I think we can start making illusions with what Rockstar is cooking. For three reasons, in addition.

The first is that, as I said, the first game of the game has already allowed experts to discuss its nature. Digital Foundry is a British medium specialized in the visual and technical analysis of video games and discussed long and lying on whether the trailer was in real time (that is, the game engine and scenes extracted from it) or a scene rendered beforehand. Some visual errors as jaggies -S. Sierra- allowed the pixel counting, and the washed image of the edges points to the use of some type of tool such as FSR or DLSS.

The second reason is that Rockstar is not Ubisoft and it is not a company that has accustomed us to CGI videos before the launch of the game itself or visual downloads. The third reason to believe that the game will end up seeing as in these trailers is that we have ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ as an example. The 2018 title, without having received a patch for the current generation, continues to be better than many games of this generation, and that was designed to function in 2013 consoles.

Come on, what There are hopes in ‘GTA VI’ at the visual level. And, as we say, we have reasons (and not only for these precedents).

Trailer screenshot

The new video begins very, very high, with some characters modeling that seem spectacular, very realistic animations both bodily and facial, without falling into the exaggeration of features, and all this bathed for what, I think, is the element that makes the trailer look as well as it looks.

Because the textured seems very good to me, but the lighting that bathes each scene is to not believe it. Among all the moments, the one who has left me speechless is one at the beginning, when we see Jason returning in his car, at night, and observes a police detention.

Trailer screenshot

The flashes, The position of light spotlights And elements such as that good textured, the most realistic color palette than in the previous installment of the saga and gestures make me create that scene completely. But it is not the only one:

Trailer screenshot

Trailer screenshot

Trailer screenshot

I am somewhat tired of the term “photorealism” we have been abusing from the launch of the first ‘Modern Warfare’, but it really is the only term that occurs to me to describe what I am seeing. Then there are the characters, with a certain caricaturized and stereotyped touch, but the physicists of elements and hairstyles, Reflexes on surfaces (The interior of the car is amazing) or the vegetation play to make the scenes … surprising.

Perfect? No, of course, and we see distant elements such as the sand or water that have visual artifacts, as well as some textures such as Lucia’s hair at some time that seem flattering, but the general level is so, so high that, for the first time from ‘Alan Wake 2’ and ‘Warhammer Space Marine II’, I feel that for something this generation of consoles is worth. And with more merit if possible in the Rockstar title, since it is an open world, with the complexity that this implies.

Rockstar promotional image

Rockstar promotional image

Rockstar promotional image

It may be making many illusions, but it comforts me that people in Rockstar think that the game is going to see like this. Not current workers, something impossible in one of the most hermetic studies in the environment, but veterans of the company. One is Ryan Fuechliffe, a member of Rockstar from 2009 to 2021 and who commented that ‘GTA VI’ will offer a “revolutionary” realism. Mike York, who worked as an animator in the company, also commented that the game will probably go to 30 frames per second because Rockstar was focusing on visual quality.

But, although I seemed to me … wild, you have to have your feet on the floor. Obbe Vermeij, former technical director of ‘GTA 3’ until ‘GTA IV’ said that, although the first trailer was “incredible”, the technical jump may not be as great as the one seen in ‘GTA V’ and that could disappoint some players. As I have already said, you have to wait to see Gameplay because, obviously, these two videos that Rockstar has revealed play a lot with the rules of the visual language of cinema.

Chamber tremors, paneos and angles that are typical of the kinematics of well -positioned virtual games and cameras and we will have to wait to watch the first video with gameplay. However, I return to my argument of ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’: Seven years later, the adventure of the outlaw is still seen as a scandal.

Trailer screenshot

How light affects the ground, in the painting or in the glass it seems crazy | Trailer screenshot

A great advantage for Rockstar is that, contrary to what so many other studies are doing, they continue to trust their own engine. The rage, developed for ‘GTA IV’, was consolidated as an engine that could make intergenerational jumps without problem. In addition, its own engine allows greater control for developers, since They know their tools perfectly And, if it is scalable enough, they can add more and more improvements that allow them to achieve the technical dimensions they want.

And something that also comes to mind is how ‘GTA VI’ can be the swan song of the current generation of consoles. PS5 and Xbox Series X have dragged for years the success of the previous generation of consoles (of PS4, particularly). With increasingly expensive developments, the studies had to bet on releases that reached the largest number of users, and that implied intergenerational developments.

It is something that prevented them from taking advantage of the power of the new machines, but it is a problem that Rockstar does not drag with its new ‘GTA’. This leads me to think that ‘GTA VI’ will be, As was already ‘GTA V’ on PS3 and Xbox 360one of the most leading games, if not the one that most, of this generation. And the play we saw with the previous ‘Grand Theft Auto’ may be repeated: that the game is launched and a year later the new machines arrive (with the corresponding version of ‘GTA VI’ for PS7 and the new Xbox, of course).

And yes, I know that these videos are made, precisely, to ‘get fat’ with their visual waste, but if there is a company that has demonstrated over the years that their games do not usually lower the level with respect to what is seen in the promotional material, this is one of them.

But, beyond all this, that it looks better or worse, the game points to sidereal success in the industry. The previous one, which already has twelve yearsit has more than 210 million copies sold. ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ More than 70 million and the expectations for the adventure of Lucía Ramos and Jason Duval are … stratospheric. Come on, the trailer has 10 million visualizations in just two hours.

The question is now how much that ambition of Rockstar will cost us.

In Xataka | I’ve been playing the GTA saga for years and this is what I ask for ‘GTA VI’