GTA 6 Has Kept All of Rockstar’s Promises So Far - VICE

Since its announcement, GTA 6 has been surrounded by concerns that Rockstar Games would eventually scale back some of its most ambitious features. However, everything revealed so far suggests the opposite, with Rockstar continuing to deliver on the promises it made about Grand Theft Auto VI.

When GTA 6 was first revealed in 2023, many players were blown away by its gorgeous graphics and ambitious production. However, some became worried that Rockstar’s title might be downgraded at launch after the game was delayed in 2025 and years passed without any gameplay footage.

Following the release of Grand Theft Auto VI: Extended Look, though, Rockstar Games appears to have kept every promise it made about the project. In fact, GTA 6 has not only lived up to its original trailers, but it actually looks even better in some regards.

With all that said, here are some of the biggest GTA 6 promises Rockstar has kept so far.

In the first GTA 6 trailer in 2023, many players were particularly impressed by the crowd density shown during the beach sequence. Because the scene looked so ambitious, some speculated that the final version of the game would significantly reduce the number of NPCs.

However, leaked gameplay footage that later surfaced online quickly disproved those concerns. Then the GTA 6 Netflix Extended Look released in July, and officially confirmed that Leonida will be filled to the brim with a variety of unique NPCs, making it look and feel like a real living world.

Essentially, GTA 6 has not received the major visual downgrade that some players feared. In an interview with The New York Times, Rockstar also promised more lifelike NPCs in Grand Theft Auto VI, with every character individually art-directed and supported by more than 600,000 animations.

Beyond its graphics and NPC density, Rockstar has also delivered on many of the ambitious gameplay features promised for GTA 6. Leonida is the largest world the studio has ever created, featuring a sprawling Vice City alongside smaller towns, swamps, islands and rural areas.

According to GTA 6 previews, the world is considerably more interactive than previous Grand Theft Auto games with many new features. For example, the police system has been significantly expanded, with witnesses, security cameras, search zones and vehicle trackers all potentially affecting how law enforcement responds to crimes.

Rockstar has even rebuilt the driving system and added smaller immersive details such as vehicle fuel, functional gas stations and different businesses specializing in certain upgrades. Meanwhile, Jason and Lucía’s relationship can be developed through optional activities, allowing players to shape whether their partnership feels romantic or more platonic.

When combined with its enormous map, hundreds of thousands of animations and more reactive open world, GTA 6 still appears to be every bit as ambitious as Rockstar originally promised and not been scaled back.

In May, restless players became frustrated by the lack of GTA 6 marketing. At the time, however, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick repeatedly confirmed that marketing for Grand Theft Auto VI would begin in July after pre-orders went live.

True to his word, GTA 6 marketing kicked off exactly when Zelnick said it would. We not only received a 26-minute gameplay demonstration through the Grand Theft Auto VI: Extended Look Netflix event, but Rockstar also released numerous new screenshots and gameplay details.

Rockstar Games even gave media unprecedented access to the project, with GTA 6 previews revealing thousands of new gameplay details and features. Marketing for the game may have been scarce initially, but Rockstar has more than made up for the silence with one of its biggest information drops yet.

In those same interviews back in March, Strauss Zelnick also revealed that GTA 6 marketing would be different from previous titles. The CEO specifically explained that Rockstar Games would use newer forms of media to advertise the game. The Extended Look debuting on Netflix gave us our first preview of that strategy.

However, recently, several major music artists, including Travis Scott and PinkPantheress, mysteriously revealed new GTA 6 screenshots on Instagram. The campaign ultimately led to the announcement of Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album, a new soundtrack created in collaboration with Atlantic Records.

The GTA 6 album will feature 34 original songs from popular artists such as Morgan Wallen and Keith Richards. The musical project even includes a new track produced by Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo.

Once again, Rockstar Games has lived up to its promise of delivering a unique marketing campaign for Grand Theft Auto VI. With the game’s launch still approaching, we will likely see even more unconventional promotions in the coming months.

So far, Rockstar has given players little reason to believe that its original vision of GTA 6 that was shown off in 2023 has been compromised or scaled back. The crowd density shown in initial trailers remains intact, the graphics look better than ever and the gameplay systems appear even more ambitious than originally expected.

Rockstar has also followed through on its promises regarding previews, marketing and its unconventional promotional campaign. There is still plenty of optimization that could take place before launch, but based on everything revealed so far, GTA 6 has not been downgraded. If anything, Rockstar’s vision for Vice City has only become more epic in scope.