Having now sat through Rockstar and Netflix’s lengthy new look at Grand Theft Auto 6, there’s one thought I simply cannot shake: you can see the fucking money. And if you can’t, wait a few more hours for it pop up on Youtube.

Seriously, it’s everywhere. Every street is packed with little details, traffic seems impressively dense, clubs are absolutely rammed with people and even random back alleys are full of rubbish, signs, foliage and assorted crap that somebody presumably spent several working days carefully placing. Characters move beautifully, facial animations are superb, glass shatters, computers explode during shootouts and the swamps are packed with trees, birds and wildlife. At one point Lucia parachutes across the city and the sheer scale of what’s below her blows my mind.

To steal a phrase Colin Moriarty has used on Sacred Symbols, GTA 6 has an incredible amount of production per square inch. If we eventually find out that this is the first videogame to somehow blast through a billion dollars in total development costs, I won’t be shocked.

Remember when Ubisoft started throwing around the term “AAAA” and then presented us with Skull and Bones? Well, this is what a fucking quadruple-A game looks like. Hell, toss on another A while you’re at it.

And yet, once I stopped gawking at the graphics and started thinking about what I had actually watched, I came away strangely whelmed by GTA 6 as a videogame. Maybe that was always inevitable. Hell, maybe I’m just too old and cynical to get hyped up before I actually play the game. Or maybe it’s just not for me. Or it’s…not as spectacular as the hype would make us believe?

That sounds much harsher than I mean it to. Nothing about what Rockstar showed looked bad, and quite a lot of it looked very good. It’s just that underneath the extraordinary production values, most of what we were shown is familiar. Jason and Lucia drive around, get into shootouts, rob stores, steal cars, race vehicles, fight people, escape the police and occasionally jump out of something at a dangerous height. There are jet skis, scuba diving, basketball, gym activities, dirt bikes, parachutes and probably enough other distractions to make completing the actual story statistically unlikely.

It is, in other words, Grand Theft Auto. It’s everything you’d expect. With none of the unexpected. I was waiting for something that made me jump up and go “Oh that’s fucking cool!” and it never came.

There are some potentially meaningful changes hidden amongst all of that, especially in the wanted system. Six stars appear to be back after GTA 5 capped things at five, and the smaller icons underneath the wanted level seem to represent what the police actually know about you. According to IGN’s preview, that can include your appearance, clothing and vehicle, which immediately makes disguises and vehicle changes a lot more useful than they were before.

That ties neatly into several things Rockstar showed. Jason and Lucia can mask up before committing robberies, changing clothes can apparently help throw police off, and recognised vehicles may need to be abandoned or destroyed. We even see them burn a getaway car after one job, which suddenly feels less like a cinematic flourish and more like part of a broader system.

During one escape sequence they also switch into a van while police continue searching nearby, and whoever was playing the demo actually stops normally at a stop sign. At first I wondered if that was just somebody roleplaying for the presentation, but the wider police system suggests there may genuinely be situations where the smartest thing you can do is stop driving like a lunatic and blend back into normal traffic.

The idea that police are searching for actual descriptions rather than possessing a psychic connection to whichever stolen vehicle you happen to be sitting in could make escaping feel far more involved. Masks can apparently stop officers getting a proper look at you, changing clothes matters, and if police are specifically searching for Jason and Lucia together, splitting up may help shake them.

That’s the kind of systems-driven change I want to hear about because it meaningfully alters how crime itself works, rather than simply making the next explosion prettier. Not that I’m against prettier explosions.

Robberies also look potentially more involved. We see Lucia deliberately conceal a weapon, mask up and enter shops, while another sequence has Jason and Lucia raiding a jewellery store before escaping on a motorcycle. Whether every shop can be hit freely or whether some of these are structured activities remains unclear, but the footage certainly gives the impression that robberies are going to be a fairly substantial part of the game.

Racing seems hard to ignore too. I counted at least three different types during the presentation: proper circuit racing, street racing and off-road events involving dirt bikes and trucks. Each had positions, lap counters and timing information, so I get the feeling Rockstar has considerably more planned for people who enjoy driving around. Maybe they’ve decided to hide the next Midnight Club game in plain sight.

And yet none of that was what really sold me on GTA 6.

That honour goes to Jason and Lucia.

I’m already considerably more interested in these two than I expected to be. Rockstar is obviously leaning into a Bonnie and Clyde dynamic, with Jason and Lucia already wanting to pursue some sort of romantic relationship when the story gets going. Lucia calls him J, they joke about communication being important in a relationship, argue over who they should trust and generally behave like an actual couple rather than two videogame protagonists who have been awkwardly stapled together for plot purposes.

More interestingly, it turns out the relationship isn’t entirely set in stone. IGN reports that whether Jason and Lucia actually become a proper romantic couple is partly down to the player. Spending time together outside missions can strengthen their relationship, whether that’s exploring Leonida, shopping, exercising or, this being Grand Theft Auto, committing armed robbery together. Ignoring messages or spending too little time together can apparently damage things instead.

That suddenly makes some of the tiny interactions shown during the presentation rather more interesting. At one point you can simply hold the right trigger to hold Lucia’s hand, while other contextual actions apparently include holding doors open for each other. Initially I assumed this was just Rockstar indulging its usual obsession with unnecessary little details, but these interactions now seem to exist within a wider relationship system.

It doesn’t sound like we’re getting Grand Theft Auto: Couples Counselling Simulator, mind you. Jason and Lucia still need to work together regardless of how romantically close they become because the main story depends on their partnership, and Rockstar apparently isn’t handing out stat bonuses because Jason remembered date night. But their relationship can influence how parts of the story unfold, which immediately raises some interesting questions.

Do they become inseparable right until the bitter end? Does one decide they want out? Can we accidentally turn them into that couple who clearly fucking hate each other but somehow remain together for another eight years? Does somebody eventually betray the other? Suddenly the Bonnie and Clyde comparison feels less like marketing shorthand and more like something Rockstar might genuinely let us influence.

They’re both criminals and neither seems particularly bothered by that fact. Lucia happily pistol-whips people during robberies, while Jason casually admits at one point that he generally feels more comfortable when he has a gun. But they’re also strangely grounded, particularly compared with GTA 5’s trio of Michael, Franklin and the human embodiment of several untreated psychological conditions known as Trevor.

Jason especially seems like a fairly straightforward guy so far. He’s rugged, not particularly articulate and apparently quite happy to solve difficult situations with firearms. Lucia seems sharper and slightly more cautious, particularly when it comes to trusting new contacts, but she’s every bit as capable of causing trouble. During one mission she gets grabbed by a man who looks about three times her size and eventually solves the situation by stabbing him in the eye with a high heel.

More importantly, we can now confirm that Lucia’s gym career has an actual progression system. Working out can apparently make both protagonists stronger and visibly more muscular, while overeating can push their bodies in the opposite direction. So when we see Lucia bench pressing roughly 40kg during the presentation, assuming a standard 20kg Olympic bar and those visible 10kg plates, that’s merely the beginning of her journey.

Come on, Lucia. Rookie numbers. Progressive overload. Get those up.

Joking aside, I think Jason and Lucia might give GTA 6 something I didn’t particularly expect: a fairly sincere emotional centre. They remind me a little more of CJ than GTA 5’s protagonists. San Andreas was capable of becoming utterly ridiculous, but CJ himself generally reacted to everything like a recognisable human being rather than somebody permanently waiting to deliver the next joke. He took it all seriously, even the batshit insane stuff.

That ties into probably my biggest surprise from the entire presentation: GTA 6 seems remarkably restrained when it comes to satire.

Don’t misunderstand me, it’s definitely still there. One TV advert is selling what appears to be an antidepressant, another is advertising a burger containing enough meat to kill a medium-sized horse and a plane flies overhead carrying a banner asking, “Why 69 when you can 919?” There’s also a fantastic sequence where Lucia steals a car only to discover some idiot hiding in the boot doing a livestreamed “trunk challenge.” Upon discovering that his friend’s car has been stolen, he does what any sensible modern influencer would do and continues broadcasting the resulting police chase to more than 50,000 people.

What surprised me was everything around it. Large parts of this new footage play more like a reasonably straight crime thriller than the relentless parody I had in my head. I was expecting jokes about Trump, LGBTQ+, being woke, Russia, the Left, the Right, the middle….everybody. But nope. We got something grittier.

An early mission involving a police raid on a drug operation is surprisingly grim. Workers desperately flee through the building while armed police storm inside, and we meet a cop named Mendez who clearly has some sort of prior connection to both the criminals and Jason and Lucia. At one point he encounters a man trying to surrender a shotgun.

“Hey, this ain’t even loaded,” the guy tells him.

“Aw, too bad,” Mendez responds before shooting him.

The moment is nasty, quick and not particularly funny. Much of the story footage follows that same tone. Jason and Lucia are in serious trouble for reasons that aren’t completely clear yet, they’re taking increasingly dangerous jobs and they have good reason to be suspicious of virtually everyone they meet.

Even the more ridiculous missions are being framed through that crime-thriller lens. One job has Jason and Lucia babysitting an obnoxiously wealthy corporate creative type called Andreas de Leon, who is busy doing cocaine off a scale model of a building while rambling about how many incredible ideas his frontal cortex has produced. Eventually armed attackers crash the party, Lucia gets taken hostage and Jason essentially finds himself starring in a budget-conscious remake of Die Hard.

The comedy is there, but it isn’t constantly stepping on the drama. I like that.

I wonder if that’s partly a response to GTA 5. That game could be hilarious, but its world was so relentlessly cynical that almost everyone eventually became an asshole, an idiot or a target for another joke. GTA 6, at least from this presentation, seems more willing to let its leads be relatively sincere while all the insanity happens around them.

That appeals to me quite a bit. I’ve never been the world’s biggest Grand Theft Auto fan. San Andreas and Vice are the ones I really love, while GTA 4 and GTA 5 never connected with me on quite the same level. So unlike the people who have spent more than a decade imagining their perfect version of GTA 6, I haven’t arrived with a gigantic checklist of things Rockstar needs to accomplish.

Even so, there’s an unavoidable problem hanging over this game: what could Rockstar possibly show that would actually live up to the expectations?

GTA 5 came out in 2013. Red Dead Redemption 2 followed in 2018. In the years since, Grand Theft Auto 6 has gradually stopped being treated like a normal videogame and started being spoken about like the second coming of Christ, except Jesus probably has a smaller marketing budget.

The rest of the industry has also had 13 years to catch up. Huge open worlds aren’t unusual anymore. Detailed cities aren’t unusual. Massive crowds, dynamic events, cinematic missions, vehicle customisation, environmental destruction and countless side activities have all appeared elsewhere. Rockstar helped establish many of these expectations in the first place, and now it has to somehow make them feel revolutionary again.

Based on this extended look, I don’t think it does.

The shooting looks fine. Rockstar has never been the absolute best when it comes to combat and nothing here made me think GTA 6 is suddenly going to embarrass the best third-person shooters on the market. The driving looks good, but watching someone else drive can only tell me so much about how the cars actually feel. Even the big police chases and explosive set-pieces are things we’ve seen before.

What is impressive is how all of those familiar things are being presented.

A shootout isn’t remarkable because Jason can fire an assault rifle; it’s remarkable because he’s doing it through an absurdly detailed office while glass, furniture and computers are being torn apart around him. A nightclub isn’t impressive simply because Jason can walk through one; it’s impressive because the place appears absolutely rammed with people and he has to physically push his way through the crowd. Driving through the city isn’t technically novel, but the amount of traffic, pedestrians, foliage and environmental detail Rockstar is throwing onto the screen simultaneously is ridiculous.

Perhaps it doesn’t need to reinvent Grand Theft Auto. Perhaps it just needs to take almost everything Rockstar has spent decades building and deliver it at a level of density, detail and polish that nobody else has the time, money or sheer institutional insanity to attempt.

I won’t really know until I get to play the damn thing.

For now, I’m somewhere between impressed and fascinated. As a videogame, nothing Rockstar showed completely blew my mind. As a technical achievement, though, GTA 6 looks borderline absurd, and as somebody who loves following this industry almost as much as actually playing games, I’m fascinated just to see what happens when probably the biggest videogame production ever attempted finally gets shoved out into the world. Something that looks this good, this late into the current console-generation’s lifestayle is basically fucking sorcery.

And if the shooting and driving turn out to be merely decent, I’ve still got Jason and Lucia. I want to see whether they ride off into the sunset together, destroy each other completely or wind up riddled with bullets in the finest Bonnie and Clyde tradition.

And, obviously, whether Lucia finally hits that bench PR.