As expected, a new Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer means that fans all over the world are freaking out. The trailer, which focused largely on the game’s dual protagonists Jason and Lucia, as well an accompanying trove of new illustrations and screenshots, has predictably sent GTA die-hards into a tizzy of dissecting every single frame and image for clues and details as to what the game has in store.

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Grand Theft Auto 6 Was Always Going To Look Amazing

Alongside the requisite wave of new conspiracy theories surrounding the plot, characters, and actors, we’ve also seen an outpouring of awe and praise for its graphical fidelity. To be clear, this isn’t a surprise – GTA 6 was always going to be a technical showcase. That is, presumably, where a big chunk of its purported $2 billion budget is going. Imagine if the game really did cost that much and just looked fine. Players would riot.

And lest we forget, Red Dead Redemption 2, Rockstar’s last game, was also renowned for its attention to detail. Every character had their own routine. When NPCs sat down to eat meals, you could watch them eat it bite by bite, with the food disappearing gradually off the plate. Characters would comment if you did something stupid like aim your gun at the ground or ride your horse off a cliff. And, infamously, the testicles on horses would shrink in the cold.

But the amount of detail we’ve seen in the second trailer is, frankly, astonishing. The animation looks lifelike, the water is gorgeous, the facial expressions are unprecedented in their detail. The beer bottles are driving fans into hysterics because of how perfectly simulated they are – you can see bubbles in the bottles, moving exactly the way they would in real life, which is a ridiculous amount of detail to include in a video game. Most shocking of all, Rockstar has revealed that the trailer was made entirely of gameplay and cutscene footage captured in-game on PS5.

Not even a PS5 Pro. A PS5.

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But Current Hardware Can Only Do So Much

It feels like GTA 6 will be the next ‘how the heck did they do that’ game, akin to how The Last of Us Part 2 blew players (and developers!) away with its seamless animation transitions, astonishingly true to life facial and body motion capture, and attention to detail, like its glass physics, blood spatters, and functional interactive doors. And of course, there was the kiss between Ellie and Dina, which was an achievement on its own because of how difficult it is to realistically animate kissing in video games, even in cutscenes.

It was also gay, which is always a nice bonus.

But there are hints that while GTA 6 will be a landmark game for graphical realism (which I don’t think should be something to work towards at all, but I digress), there are things that it still might not be able to pull off. For one, the kissing. We see Lucia and Jason rolling around in bed together, but the trailer stops short of them actually locking lips. It’s a strange omission in a trailer that otherwise shows so much minute detail. Surely, after over a decade of development and five years after TLOU 2, Rockstar has figured out kissing. I’m unsure if it was left out to create more tension in the trailer, or if the kissing looked too weird to leave in.

Another thing we never see is characters eating and drinking, which is another thing that’s notoriously difficult to animate realistically. Even in RDR2, when NPCs ate meals, it wasn’t entirely convincing. These omissions from the trailer don’t necessarily indicate that they’re omitted from the game, but it does serve as a reminder that even in a game as pretty as GTA 6, there might be things that still can’t be done.

And on top of that, I simply can’t believe that GTA 6 can incorporate this much minute detail and still be able to run at 60 frames per second. Considering that this in-game footage is captured on a PS5, the tech must already be operating at capacity to render all this. There is just no way that we’re going to get this much detail and a frame rate over 30 fps. No matter how much money Rockstar pours into this game, there simply has to be a point where technical limitations become an insurmountable obstacle. Maybe a PS5 Pro could manage it, but it’s really impossible to say with the information we have.

Red Dead Redemption 2 still doesn’t run at 60fps on consoles, despite players begging for that for years.

A year before launch, GTA 6 is already likely the most graphically realistic and detailed game players have ever seen. But hardware limitations are a real problem developers have to contend with, and there are still things that video games haven’t been able to do realistically. We’ll just have to wait and see if GTA 6 is the game that smashes those barriers.

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Grand Theft Auto 6

Action Adventure Systems OpenCritic Reviews Released May 26, 2026 Developer(s) Rockstar Games Publisher(s) Rockstar Games Engine Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) Multiplayer Online Multiplayer Prequel(s) Grand Theft Auto 5 Franchise Grand Theft Auto Powered by Expand Collapse