GTA 6 gameplay: what we know

Trailer 1, from December 2023, is built around Lucia. It opens with her in an orange jumpsuit opposite a prison counselor, cuts across Vice City beach crowds, rooftop pools and swamp roads, and closes with Lucia and Jason raiding a store together, masked. Much of the world arrives as in-world social media clips: vertical phone footage of a woman dancing on a moving car, a man swinging hammers on his porch as police close in, alligators wandering through backyards. Rockstar is selling a world dense enough to generate its own viral feed.

Trailer 2, from May 2025, picks the thread up on the outside. It shows the two running jobs together, with car chases and boats threading the Leonida Keys, and viewers also describe an ankle monitor on Lucia’s leg in later scenes, which Rockstar has not described. It also shows the returning gun-store loop through a TV commercial for Phil’s Ammu-Nation, and Rockstar noted the footage was captured on a PlayStation 5.

Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, released August 27, 2026, is the clearest look at how the game plays. Rockstar says the 26-minute video was captured entirely from in-game footage on PS5, and it does not call it Trailer 3. It shows players hot-swapping between Jason and Lucia, including mid-combat and a swap from Lucia parachuting off a tower to Jason mid-conversation; a wanted level that now climbs to six stars; police that track who you are, with on-screen icons for your clothes, face and car and whether the two leads are together, and police cars that no longer sit on the minimap; shaking pursuers by changing masks, hats and clothes or switching vehicles; cover-based shootouts, shooting from the car during chases, and car and dirt-bike races; and activities from basketball and scuba diving to fan boats in the wetlands and petting dogs. It also shows interactive interiors and text messages between the two leads.

The fourth official video is the Launch Trailer, published October 15, 2026. It runs 90 seconds, was captured entirely in-game on a PlayStation 5 and is set to “Flower in a Hurricane”, a new single from Justice, the duo Rockstar named as composers of the game’s original score. Rockstar titles it Launch Trailer, not Trailer 3.

What Rockstar has stated outright is still narrower than what the footage shows. On the record: you play both Lucia and Jason; the map spans six named Leonida regions; Lucia’s bio says she was jailed in Leonida Penitentiary and "Sheer luck got her out"; and Jason’s bio puts him in the Keys working for local drug runners. An Extended Look then showed systems Rockstar has not fully explained, from exactly how switching works in missions to the full wanted-level rules.

Rockstar’s Rob Nelson told IGN that GTA 6 is “definitely a step forward in all respects”, from the size of the world and how deep it feels to the density of traffic and people and how they respond to you, in remarks Game Rant quotes.

Rockstar has published no vehicle count and no story length, though Rockstar’s Rob Nelson told The New York Times his own playthrough ran about 80 hours including optional goals. Mission and heist structure, progression, whether the first-person mode GTA 5 added in 2014 returns, and everything about the online mode are still unannounced. An Extended Look is in-game footage, not a continuous play session, so plenty remains unshown.

Can you go inside buildings in GTA 6?

Yes. Rockstar’s footage shows explorable interiors, including stores, clubs and homes, and An Extended Look shows Jason taking food from the fridge in Lucia’s apartment. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported on October 16, 2026 that Rockstar’s team described hundreds of small interiors that players can explore. That is a reported remark from a press demonstration, not a published number: Rockstar has given no exact count, no list, and no promise that every door in Leonida opens.

The clearest interior evidence is An Extended Look (August 27, 2026), which Rockstar says was captured entirely from in-game footage on PS5. It shows interactive interiors, with Jason taking food from the fridge in Lucia’s apartment.

The newest evidence is a report. In a newsletter dated October 16, 2026, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier wrote about a Rockstar demonstration and quoted the studio’s team (the head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe and the development leads Aaron Garbut, Phil Hooker and Rob Nelson were in the room) describing “hundreds” of small interiors that players can go and explore. MP1st and GamingBolt relayed the quote; we could not open the paywalled original, so we label this as reported, not confirmed. The same newsletter gives Schreier’s own impression that the story seems closer to Red Dead Redemption 2 than to Grand Theft Auto V, which is his opinion and not a Rockstar statement.

Trailer 1 provides the earliest examples. Lucia and Jason carry out a masked store robbery from inside the shop, and another scene shows an alligator walking through a store while people film it. Those are rendered game locations, not a claim about a menu or a loading screen. They prove that indoor environments are part of the playable world and story.

Trailer 2 widens the range of interiors. Rockstar shows Lucia and Jason in homes, bars and a Vice City club, along with indoor conversations tied to the supporting cast. The footage establishes variety, but a trailer edit cannot establish whether each place is open during free roam, limited to a mission, available only at certain hours or used only in a cutscene. Those distinctions matter more than a raw screenshot count.

Rockstar’s GTA VI page, the official videos, its media pages and the PlayStation and Xbox store listings publish no building total and no percentage of doors that open.

Sources:

• Rockstar Games: Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1
• Rockstar Games: Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 2
• Rockstar Games: Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look
• Rockstar: official GTA VI page
• Bloomberg: Behind the scenes of Grand Theft Auto VI (newsletter, October 16, 2026)
• MP1st: GTA 6 to feature hundreds of interior spaces (October 17, 2026)
• GamingBolt: GTA 6 has hundreds of little interiors to explore (October 19, 2026)

How do you make money in GTA 6?

Rockstar has not detailed how money, businesses or property work. What its bios, its store copy and the official videos do show:

• Heists. Raul Bautista, a seasoned bank robber, recruits for high-risk scores in his Rockstar bio.
• Drug running. Rockstar’s bios describe Brian Heder as a classic drug runner in the Leonida Keys, with Jason living rent-free at one of his properties in return for help with local shakedowns.
• Store robberies. Reported: VGC says An Extended Look shows a store robbery, with one lead robbing and the other driving.
• Businesses in Leonida. Only Raw Records, the Vice City label behind Boobie Ike and Dre’Quan Priest; Boobie Ike’s real estate, strip club and recording studio; Brian Heder’s boat yard; and the Allied Crystal sugar refinery in Ambrosia.
• Ultimate Edition shops. Rockstar’s store page lists Rideout Customs Mod Shop, One-Eyed Willie’s Mod Shop in Lake Leonida, Sara’s Unisex Salon, Stock 305 Clothing Store and Electric Fang Tattoo Parlor, each marked “Only open for business with the Ultimate Edition”.
• Property. The bios show that real estate exists in Leonida, and the Ultimate Edition store copy lists “Jason’s Safehouse Vehicles” without describing the safehouse. Can you buy property?

What animals are in GTA 6?

The official videos show alligators, flamingos, dolphins, pelicans, sea turtles and sharks across Leonida. Game Informer, in its September 2026 cover story, reported more than 170 animal species, and coverage of the story adds over 60 kinds of bird and over 30 land mammals. Those figures are the magazine’s: Rockstar has published no species list. Rockstar’s Leonida Keys page shows a scuba diver among sea turtles and reef fish, and its Mount Kalaga copy mentions hunting and fishing.

Related

• GTA 6: An Extended Look
• GTA 6 Launch Trailer
• Does GTA 6 have a first-person mode?
• GTA 6 weapons
• GTA 6 wanted level and police
• GTA 6 music and radio stations
• GTA 6 vehicles
• GTA 6 map

More on Story, characters and content

• What is GTA 6
• What is the GTA 6 story