GTA 6 may end up being too ‘grounded’ according to first official preview

The first ever preview of GTA 6 has appeared online, but not from any of the usual sources, and it confirms a number of potentially controversial gameplay elements.

The Netflix Extended Look at GTA 6 is due to take place on Thursday evening, but that won’t be the only source of revelations that day. There’ve been rumours that several influencers were invited to Rockstar North last month and at least one has been bragging that he’ll have a preview, of some kind, as soon as the Netflix show has premiered.

It doesn’t sound like anyone’s actually played the game, so they may just have seen the show ahead of time, but the first preview has appeared today, via British ‘youth culture’ magazine Dazed. That implies other non-gaming focused outlets may also have been given access to the game, although as with everything else GTA-related it’s hard to know for sure what’s going on.

The Dazed article does not include a lot of new information but there are some things that have never been confirmed before, including the ability to control both characters at the same time. Although the most potentially controversial aspect is just how realistic the game is attempting to be.

While much of the fun in previous GTA games has come from exploring the open world and doing whatever you want, including gunning down or running over people with little chance of police interference, that will apparently be different in GTA 6; to the point where even if you we’re just walking around with a gun out everyone will react as they would in real life.

‘For some gamers, there’s a fear that what GTA 6 gains in immersion, it loses in the chaos and anarchy that have been part of the series’ DNA since the outset, but for Rockstar, the goal is to create a world of total immersion, which reacts more realistically than ever to what you choose to make of it,’ reads the Dazed article.

The word ‘grounded’ is used more than once to describe the game, as the article ruminates on the fact that old school GTA rampages may no longer be viable. We’ll have to see how it all works in practice but putting realism before gameplay is always a risky decision and it seems to go against GTA’s traditionally heightened sense of reality – after all, it’s meant to take place in a satire of the real world, not the real world itself.

In terms of playing as both characters, the article isn’t very descriptive but while it says you can just wander off as either Jason or Lucia alone you can also swap between them when they’re together. That presumably works something like a Lego game, where you’re swapping between multiplayer characters, although there’s no suggestion that the game has co-op play.

There’s also confirmation that the game features role-playing systems similar to 2004’s San Andreas, which is interesting because those elements were not universally popular at the time. Nevertheless, in GTA 6 eating too much food, without doing enough exercise, will see both characters gaining weight, while working out sees them building their muscles.

There’s also been separate reports that cars will run out of petrol after a while and will need to be refuelled. Dazed article has a few new images in the article but nothing very different from the ones that have been shown so far.

Oh, and another video from the game has leaked out this evening. It’s presumably from serial leaker ‘Cyberleek’ but this time it contains some story spoilers, so you may want to avoid that one if you want to keep yourself pure for the game’s release on November 19.

Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

MORE: Xbox responds to Sony physical media debacle with new disc-to-digital feature

MORE: Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy – escaping the rat race

MORE: Star Wars Zero Company review – XCOM wins the Clone Wars