Sky News combed through the 91-second teaser to glean as many details as we can – here’s what we’ve learned.
The wait will go on
We’ll start at the end, with the trailer closing out with confirmation the game won’t arrive until 2025.
That’ll make it 12 years since the release of GTA V, which has sold an astonishing 185 million copies. It’s by far the longest gap between entries in the franchise.
Fitting then that Rockstar picked Tom Petty‘s Love Is A Long Road as the backing track for the trailer.
But look at this way: you’ve already waited a decade… what’s another one or two years?
Return to Vice City
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Previous leaks claimed GTA would be returning to Vice City and the trailer confirmed it.
Rockstar’s fictionalised take on Miami hasn’t appeared in a mainline instalment since GTA: Vice City in 2002.
That game was set in 1986 and wore its Scarface influences on its sleeve, but the next entry follows GTA IV and V (which were set in New York and Los Angeles) in going for a contemporary setting.
Rockstar’s Florida looks to be called Leonida, based on a shot from a Fox News-style news channel.
The trailer suggests players will be able to explore beyond the sun-soaked streets of the city, though, with other locations resembling the real state’s Everglades and South Beach also spotted.
Another detail that emerged from prior leaks was that GTA VI would boast the series’ first female protagonist.
The trailer seems to confirm that’s the case, specifically a character named Lucia. She appears to start the game in prison trying to get out, and is later joined by an apparent male co-lead.
GTA VI has been mooted as having a Bonnie and Clyde-style story, and the trailer doesn’t dampen those reports.
There are certainly hints of romance, and it feels significant that the trailer – which doesn’t skimp on crazy set pieces (more on those next) – chooses to open and close on intimate conversations between characters.
Rockstar’s last game was the almost shockingly mature and well-written western epic Red Dead Redemption 2, so perhaps some of that will rub off on GTA.
Satirising modern America
Rockstar has always been known for poking fun at life in the US, from excessive consumer culture and gun laws to gender politics and the banality of daytime radio.
Given quite how wild a ride the real world has been on since the last game came out, there was more curiosity than ever about how the writers could begin to satire America in 2023.
The trailer leans heavily on society’s obsession with social media, with pedestrians consistently seen on their phones filming wild behaviour befitting of any good “Florida man does [INSERT CRAZY THING HERE]” news report.
We see car chases, someone twerking on top of a vehicle, an alligator breaking into a corner shop, and plenty more quick cuts of wacky hi jinks fans have come to expect.
TikTok-like livestreams are seen throughout – that platform was years from launching when GTA V released.
A big step forward in tech
Inevitably, the sheer length of time between GTA V and VI means the jump in visual quality is substantial.
The last game debuted on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 – that’s two entire PlayStations and Xboxes ago!
And as previously mentioned, the franchise hasn’t been to Vice City in more than 20 years.
GTA VI’s depiction of the city looks absolutely stacked with detail, whether in outdoor locations like traffic-laden highways and bustling beaches, or the insides of nightclubs, bars, and shops.
The world will no doubt be as vast as it is detailed and there seem to be plenty of ways to get around, including cars, speed boats, helicopters, quad bikes, and lorries.
Character models are also exquisitely detailed – one man even has visible acne scars.
If that’s not a sign of how far video games have come, I don’t know what is.
What next?
Based on the promotional cycle for GTA V, it could be another decent wait for more news on the next game.
The last entry was first announced in October 2011 and a trailer was released the following month.
But the next trailer didn’t arrive until April 2013, followed by a deeper look at gameplay footage in July, and then a launch trailer marking the game’s eventual release in September.
We also know nothing yet about GTA’s next online mode, which is one of the reasons the last game has had such incredible longevity.
Rockstar will likely take their time in sharing more. Unless, of course, the leakers beat them to it once again.
Taylor Swift’s new album helped fuel the highest weekly vinyl sales in 30 years – but is our rediscovered love of owning records environmentally reckless?
PVC (poly vinyl chloride), the plastic from which records have traditionally been made, isn’t great for the planet, and concerns have also been raised over packaging as vinyl sales have risedn in recent years.
Rou Reynolds, frontman of chart-topping rock band Enter Shikari, believes leading artists need to shoulder some responsibility to “push forward” change.
“The bigger you are as an artist, the more influence you have, the more you can push things forward and accelerate progression,” he says.
In an interview with Billboard in March, Billie Eilish criticised how “wasteful it is” when “some of the biggest artists in the world” make “40 different vinyl packages”, each with “a different unique thing just to get you to keep buying more”.
“Its reasonable criticism,” says Reynolds, “but I think it’ll basically dissipate as soon as it becomes the standard to use BioVinyl, for instance – that will really take away the possibility of criticism”.
Rather than make records out of regular PVC pellets, over the last few years it has become possible to use renewable sources such as cooking oil or wood pulp.
“Traditional vinyl is an oil-based product,” Reynolds explains. “No one really wants to support the extraction of any more fossil fuels.”
Enter Shikari now insist all their records are made using BioVinyl, and Reynolds is optimistic that if more artists make demands about what their records are made from, it would become the new norm.
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“A lot of independent artists, like myself, we can light these fires, then it spreads and before you know it, it will become the industry standard.”
‘The advances are incredible’
Leading voices within vinyl production want the music industry to listen.
“Along with the Vinyl Alliance and the Vinyl Records Manufacturers Association, we’re looking at the whole manufacturing chain,” says Karen Emanuel, chief executive of Key Production, the UK’s largest broker for physical music production.
“I’ve been in the business probably about 35 years and the advances that have been made, it’s incredible. A lot of the big plastics companies, for PVC they’ve found a way replacing the fossil fuel elements [which] could mean as much as a 90% reduction in the carbon footprint of the vinyl.”
The catch, at the moment, is the cost.
“It’s a bit more expensive to manufacture but if enough people manufacture with it then the price point will come down… it’s something that we’re really trying to push people towards.”
Would fans be happy to pay more for a greener product?
Lee Jefferies, the owner of Leicestershire-based vinyl pressing plant Sonic Wax Pressing, is such a big vinyl lover, he spent £100,000 buying the world’s most valuable Motown record.
“Ultimately everything works from retail back,” he says “And with retail prices already being quite high on vinyl it’s very hard for people to have the extra money to buy biodegradable vinyl.”
But a recent survey conducted by Key Production found more than two thirds (69%) of vinyl buyers indicated they would be encouraged to buy more if the records were made with a reduced environmental impact.
The findings also revealed that the vast majority, 77%, of regular vinyl customers are willing to pay a premium for reduced impact products, signalling a significant market demand for eco-friendly alternatives.
Is there a bigger problem?
Ultimately, either the consumer, artists or labels will have to shoulder the cost if vinyl is to be made more sustainably.
But while a big old hunk of PVC might feel like the least green option, are we getting ourselves in a spin when we should also be looking in another direction?
Figures from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) put global vinyl sales for last year at about 80 million – using the IMPALA indepdent music companies association’s music emissions calculator, that works out at producing around 156k tonnes of CO2 emissions.
If you compare that to streaming, with Spotify alone – responsible for about a third of the market – its own estimates for its global carbon emissions were 280k tonnes last year, with vast amounts of electricity being used to power its data storage servers.
For Enter Shikari’s Reynolds, the potential to make vinyl greener is exciting.
“It has the same quality, the same appearance, you really wouldn’t notice the difference, which is incredible,” he says. “I think it speaks to, you know, a lot of the time people think that the transition society is about to go through, we think we’re going to lose luxuries… but I think this is just an example of why that’s not the case.
“You know, all it takes is some thought and some adaptation, and then some adoption… it’s super exciting.”
Perhaps now it’s time for the music industry to take note.
Lily Tomlin, Morgan Fairchild and Ben Stiller have led tributes to “one-of-a-kind” actor Dabney Coleman following his death aged 92.
Coleman made his career playing comedic villains, mean-spirited bosses and villains in films including 9 to 5 and Tootsie, as well as playing Commodore Louis Kaestner in Boardwalk Empire.
Lily Tomlin, who starred alongside him in 9 To 5 with Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton, said: “We just loved him.”
In her post to X, the actress shared a photo of her character Violet Newstead dressed in a Snow White costume beside a tense-looking Coleman as her egotistical boss Franklin Hart Jr.
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Morgan Fairchild, who starred in Falcon Crest and Friends, described Coleman as a “great one”.
“So very sorry to hear of the death of the wonderful #DabneyColeman”, she wrote on X alongside a black and white photo of them together.
“We went out for a bit in the ’80s and I adored him. This town has lost one of a kind!”
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Coleman “took his last earthly breath peacefully and exquisitely” in his Santa Monica home on Thursday, his daughter said in a statement on Friday on behalf of the family.
“My father crafted his time here on Earth with a curious mind, a generous heart and a soul on fire with passion, desire and humour that tickled the funny bone of humanity”, she said.
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“As he lived, he moved through this final act of his life with elegance, excellence and mastery.”
Ben Stiller, Zoolander and Meet The Parents actor, praised Coleman for paving the way for character actors.
“The great Dabney Coleman literally created, or defined, really – in a uniquely singular way – an archetype as a character actor.
“He was so good at what he did it’s hard to imagine movies and television of the last 40 years without him.”
Coleman starred in a number of films and TV series in the 1960s, then made his breakthrough as a corrupt mayor in the satirical soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, in 1976.
His film credits include a computer scientist in WarGames, Tom Hanks’ father in You’ve Got Mail and a chief firefighter in The Towering Inferno.
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He won a best actor Golden Globe for The Slap Maxwell Story and an Emmy for best supporting actor in Peter Levin’s 1987 legal drama Sworn To Silence.
Coleman also won two Screen Actors Guild Awards as part of the cast of crime drama Boardwalk Empire and received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his starring role in the NBC sitcom Buffalo Bill.
Blue Peter’s youngest ever presenter has claimed disgraced entertainer Rolf Harris sexually assaulted her when she was a teenage host of the children’s show.
Yvette Fielding, who joined the long-running BBCprogramme aged 18, told the Sun newspaper how the paedophile predator squeezed and patted her bottom after finding herself alone with him in a TV studio.
The now 55-year-old also recalled an uncomfortable experience with “grotesque” Jimmy Savile, who was later revealed to be one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders.
Fielding has questioned the role of the BBC in allowing their behaviour, arguing people in the industry “must have known”.
She became a Blue Peter presenter in 1987 and left five years later, going on to host a string of BBC programmes including The Heaven And Earth Show, The General and City Hospital.
Recounting the incident with Harris, she said: “It was very confusing and shocking – just bizarre to think Rolf Harris was squeezing and patting my bottom and I am standing there, thinking ‘I don’t know what to do’.
“Other people in the industry must have known what he was like and you left me alone in the studio with him.
“That shouldn’t have happened. I must have been 18 or 19.
He was also known to be associated with Savile, who managed to conceal his crimes until after his death in 2011.
On her meeting with the late depraved DJ, Fielding told the Sun: “He took my hand and started stroking it. ‘Look into my eyes’, he said, ‘And tell me what you’re thinking’.”
“He was grotesque,” she added.
“I just don’t understand why the BBC allowed him to get away with that for as long as he did.”
Savile worked for much of his career at the BBC presenting programmes including Top Of The Pops and Jim’ll Fix It.