The biggest video game of all time looks like a movie
Rockstar’s GTA VI preview further blurs the lines between Hollywood and gaming.
Rockstar’s GTA VI preview further blurs the lines between Hollywood and gaming.
GTA VI: all the news on Rockstar’s next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series
is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
I think I know why Rockstar Games debuted its “extended look” of
on Netflix instead of immediately dropping it for free on YouTube. Unlike most video game trailers, the almost 27-minute preview of
felt more like a slice of a prestige crime drama than any video game trailer that I’ve ever seen. To make a new game that lasts another decade or more and potentially rivals the success of its predecessor, Rockstar is clearly trying to further blur the lines between Hollywood and video games.
The line between games and movies has been getting consistently fuzzier. Look no further than
, which has the snappy pacing, acting, and cinematography of a great action film. And TV shows and movies are increasingly pulling from video games
franchises being built around successful video games. Now, a video game trailer has wedged between prestige TV and streaming hit movies — after watching the
’s plot details close to its chest, but the video gives the broad strokes:
is about protagonists Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos working together in Vice City. Across the tightly-edited video, which jumps between cutscenes and moments of actual gameplay, Jason and Lucia do a lot of
-style crimes: they evade cops in gunfights, pull off high-stakes robberies, and shoot a lot of people. But they also have moments of chatting leisurely in the car or even bickering about what clothes to wear.
The video also isn’t just an uninterrupted vertical section of gameplay, like video game deep dives often are. Instead, it artistically cuts between different sections, storylines, and characters to paint a picture of what to expect. I didn’t always know what was going on, but by the end of the video, I had a sense of who these people were and the city that they live in. It felt, well, like parts of a movie.
will still be very much a video game. Rockstar invited a
, and their coverage dives into things like the expansive map, the six-star Wanted system, escalating requirements to steal cars, and reactive NPCs. Those will almost certainly make for a vast sandbox to play in, building on the already immersive worlds of previous Rockstar games like
’s extended look, Rockstar instead opted to show setup, action, and dialogue scenes, leaning on story and atmosphere over gameplay mechanics. It’s a cinematic choice.
Maybe I’m thinking too deeply about a video game trailer. Yes, I know that part of this Netflix video is all just marketing hype — and Netflix probably saw it as a way to get new subscribers. And the trailer isn’t only available on Netflix; Rockstar let creators
and is publishing the extended look on its YouTube channel and its own website at 9PM ET.
, making it one of the top-selling games of all time. Rockstar’s previous two trailers for
is a big cash cow in its own right, too. But Rockstar can always do more with a game many years in the making that might be fighting for time with the Netflix library. If Thursday’s preview was any indication, all those titles might get real competition when
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GTA VI: all the news on Rockstar’s next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series
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