After a decade of waiting and endless rumors, gamers can rejoice: “Grand Theft Auto VI” is on its way as Rockstar Games released the long-anticipated sequel’s first trailer on Monday, whetting fans’ appetites. But there’s still a while to wait, with the release planned for 2025.
The trailer shows GTA’s return to the Miami-inspired Vice City from its 2002 ’80s-set installment, but looking to move into modern day. The game features its first female protagonist, Lucia, who has a Bonnie and Clyde-esque relationship with her lover and partner-in-crime. The trailer also shows plenty of guns, cars, boats, mayhem and the franchise’s satirical mockery of American media and excess.
Two whole console generations have passed since the last main installment of the series, “Grand Theft Auto V,” was first released on the PlayStation 3 in 2013. That installment is second only to “Minecraft” among the highest-selling video games ever, with 190 million copies sold. The game also spawned a successful live-service spinoff, “Grand Theft Auto Online,” where much of the GTA-related energy seems to have been this past decade.
Development on “GTA 6” has largely been kept under wraps by Rockstar, though development footage was included as part of a massive leak at the developer last year, with a British teen arrested in connection with the incident.
Since its debut on the original PlayStation in 1997, “Grand Theft Auto” has become one of the most influential and controversial video game franchises ever made, developing the popular sandbox genre where players are free to walk, drive and fly across an immense city with incredible attention to detail.
The series has also come under fire multiple times over the years for offering players the option to take actions such as killing prostitutes to get some of their money back, its depictions of ethnic groups and an infamous sex mini-game titled “Hot Coffee” that was cut from the final game, but was by the game modification community hidden inside the code of the ’90s-set “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” back in 2004.
Watch the trailer for “Grand Theft Auto VI” in the video above.