32 things we learnt from watching GTA 6: An Extended Look on Netflix

GTA 6 has made its Netflix debut, with over 20 minutes of raw gameplay footage and dozens of amazing little details you may not have noticed.

You get an idea of exactly how big GTA 6 is going to be when the debut of 26 minutes of only lightly edited gameplay footage manages to crash Netflix. It was only down for a few minutes, when the extended look went live on Thursday evening, but it immediately gave a sense that the whole world was watching.

As leaked beforehand, the video is 26 minutes long and surprisingly it is nothing but raw gameplay, with no voiceovers explaining the features, no talking heads waxing lyrical about Rockstar Games, and only a brief flash of a logo.

It’s the first time a video game has ever been promoted in this way and because there was so little context given for anything it was very easy to miss little details and hints at gameplay features that haven’t yet been confirmed. So here’s what we noticed, but do let us know what we missed because there’s bound to be much more.

Authentic clothing – weirdly, the first thing to make us go wow was the way the T-shirt Jason was wearing at the start moved as he did, with incredibly realistic looking cloth physics.

So many people – it goes without saying but the graphics were amazing throughout. However, the thing that really stands out is just how many people are in almost every scene, with dozens of highly-detailed character models just hanging around and adding to the atmosphere.

Such a pretty face – everything about the graphics seems almost photorealistic but it’s the facial animation that stands out as truly exceptional. Although it’s not just the technology itself but the acting performances, with Lucia’s actress being particularly good, with some very subtle facial acting.

No instructions – this is something that Rockstar may have been purposefully hiding for the sake of the video but there didn’t seem to be any object prompts on screen, telling you what to do next. Red Dead Redemption 2 often went overboard with these, making it seem like you were just following the developer’s stage directions, so it’s good to see them dial back on that.

Press D to drink – what you could see in several scenes though were button prompts for various mundane activities, like taking a sip of a drink at a club or holding Jason’s hand. These didn’t seem to be vital gameplay actions but instead just small interactions to add to the mood.

Off the wall – during the opening drug bust scene you see one of the drug dealers push a police officer straight through a wall. This may have been a one-off gag, but it does suggest that perhaps the game feature a fair amount of destructible scenery, but there wasn’t an obvious way to tell in any of the other scenes.

Prêt à porter – all modern GTA games allow you to change your clothes but the video went out of its way to make this clear, not just because Jason and Lucia were talking about it but because Lucia in particular looks completely different from scene to scene, especially when she’s wearing a wig.

Satire is not dead – Dan Houser said that satire was impossible in a post-Trump world and now that he’s left Rockstar, as head writer, it was possible there’d be a shift in tone for GTA 6. That wasn’t really evident from any of the footage though, which set some time aside to show some fake TV ads poking fun at American consumerism in very much the traditional GTA manner.

Knight Rider – if there was one disappointment from the video it’s that Rockstar hasn’t found any way to make car conversations seem more dynamic. Even in the video there were long segments of driving down a road while the car seemed to be talking to itself. Some sort of insert to show who’s talking, or a 70s style split screen effect, would surely have been better but conversations on the move seem to work exactly the same as GTA 5.

Text message – the above is all the more disappointing because the way texts are displayed was very visual and clever, with big glowing text bubbles appear next to the character, to show what they were saying and reading.

Doing crimes – not that it’s much of a revelation but Jason and Lucia take part in an awful lot of robberies, including what seems to be the one from the very first trailer. This appears to be more than just optional side missions and instead their main way of making money, at least at the start of the game.

Shoot the tyres – the other thing the game seems to have a lot of is car chases where Jason is hanging out the back shooting at a seemingly infinite supply of police cars and helicopters. It looks great though, especially the bit where a fellow bank robber jumps in the back of their car and asks for help.

Switching sides – another thing that seems to work exactly the same as GTA 5 is how you switch characters. At one point the point of view zooms out and refocus from Lucia to Jason, just as it worked in the last game. However, it’s not clear if you can switch more quickly when the pair are near each other. You do seem to change characters during one of the chases but it seems to be the game switching it, not the player.

Welcome to the party – the sequence at the end, with Jason and Lucia acting as bodyguards in a skyscraper overrun by terrorists was very reminiscent of Die Hard, especially when Jason gets hold of a walkie talkie and dumps a dead bad guy in the lift. Movie homages have always been a big part of GTA and that doesn’t seem to have changed for the new game.

Bullet time – it’s impossible to tell how much the gunplay has improved from just watching a video but it certainly seemed very slick and John Wick-inspired. It’s also clear that there’s a slow motion affect available, although how exactly you activate it remains to be seen.

A world of adventure – there was a ton of other activities, many of which have been hinted at by previous trailers and screenshots, but which were only shown for a second, so here’s what stuck out to us:

• Piloting airboats in a swamp
• Basketball
• Suba diving
• Weightlifting
• Swimming
• Jet-skiing
• Using binoculars to spy on someone using VR
• Kayaking
• Visiting a strip club
• Some form of motorsport
• Sunbathing
• Shooting gallery
• Motorcross
• Base jumping
• Flying a seaplane
• Piloting various boats on the ocean

There was also a part where there’s a car chase going on and it’s being livestreamed, with fake comments appearing on the left. Whether that’s a one-off or something that can happen with multiple activities isn’t yet clear.

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