Rockstar Games has spent almost three years releasing trailers and saying almost nothing around them. On Wednesday the quiet broke twice. The same day the studio issued its first statement on the gameplay leaks, Dazed published a deep dive from its autumn print issue, with more on-record detail about Grand Theft Auto VI than Rockstar has offered anywhere since the reveal trailer.
The voices are senior: Rob Nelson, head of development and co-studio head at Rockstar North; Rupert Humphries, senior vice president of narrative; game writer Michael Wiafe; Jamie-Lee Lloyd, senior art director for characters; Stu Petri, vice president of 2D and UI design; and Jillian Carr, the Miami stylist who has designed the game’s fashion since 2023. The print issue goes on sale 10 September. The feature is online now, and here is what it adds.
You can drive as Jason while Lucia scrolls her phone
Dazed describes the couple system in motion. On the way to a job, you can cruise as Jason, or swap to Lucia in the passenger seat and scroll the in-game phone. When the job goes wrong, the same system lets you take the wheel one moment and fire on pursuers out of the passenger window the next. Jason and Lucia are the first playable couple to lead a GTA game, and you can run them together or send them off to cause chaos independently. Humphries says the story is consciously staged as “a Bonnie and Clyde-type narrative”.
The social media feeds work
That in-game phone is not a prop. The game carries working social media feeds, and the rise of Real Dimez, the rap duo among the game’s cast, can be traced through viral posts inside the game. A satire of 2020s America was always going to need one.
Food, sleep and benders change the characters’ bodies
Red Dead Redemption 2’s body systems return and expand. Food affects Jason and Lucia’s weight, exercise visibly builds and tones their muscles, and a multi-day bender or a long stretch on the run shows up on their faces. “We want to enable as much self-expression as possible,” Nelson tells the magazine, “without losing the essence of the characters.”
Lucia is the first fully written female lead in a mainline GTA
Dazed calls Lucia the first fully fleshed-out female lead in a mainline GTA game, with an asterisk the piece itself supplies: the 1997 original offered a 50-50 split of male and female protagonists, and it has been male leads all the way down since 1999. “The thing we love about this medium is the way these characters aren’t empty avatars that you can do whatever you want with,” says Nelson. “Their story becomes a journey you share with them.”
A Rockstar research team is embedded in Miami
Groups of Rockstar employees have visited Miami and its surrounding areas over the last decade, and a dedicated research team lives in the city. Humphries describes the method plainly: “We will meet with ex-criminals, law enforcement, club promoters, gun dealers and anyone notorious or influential who’ll take our calls,” he says. “We hang out, get a feeling for the place, listen to the stories, cross-reference that with books and journalism, and try to get to the heart of which characters will bring the city we are creating to life.”
Most of the cast came out of that research: old-school drug runner Brian Heder, his conspiracy-minded associate Cal Hampton, bank robber Raul Bautista, and Boobie Ike, whose private empire spans the Jack of Hearts strip club and a music studio overseen by Dre’Quan Priest. The sound has the same roots. “We love Miami music, particularly Miami bass, going through to more recent Miami artists like Kodak Black and Sexyy Red,” says Humphries, naming Overtown house parties, Booby Trap on the River and the high end of South Beach as the worlds the game’s characters move through.
The studio has more than doubled since Red Dead Redemption 2
To build all of this, the Rockstar team has more than doubled in size since Red Dead Redemption 2, with offices around the world and one LA branch dedicated almost solely to pedestrian NPCs. The vehicle handling team is made up of race-car drivers. More than 50 real street artists were brought in to design murals for places like the Stockyard, Vice City’s answer to Miami’s Wynwood. Dazed also repeats an online rumour that the game cost more to build than the Burj Khalifa; nobody in the piece confirms a figure, so treat that as the rumour it is. Nelson does not duck the stakes: “It is a lot of pressure internally and externally, but that pressure is ultimately a privilege we know we are fortunate to have,” he says. “All we want to do is deliver for our audience.”
The fashion credits are in-game brands
Read the small print under Dazed’s photographs and every label is Leonida’s: Stock 305, Nola, Ferruccio Tucci, This/That, Caliber, Blagueurs. Stock 305 is the clothing store Rockstar itself lists among the Ultimate Edition’s businesses. Carr, who has built the game’s “fashion ecosystem” since 2023, explains why clothes matter so much here: “Vice City is built around vanity,” she says. “Between social media, celebrity culture and a constant flow of tourists, appearances carry significant weight, and trend cycles turn over quickly.” Petri, who oversees the in-game brands, shops and campaigns, puts it wider: “These brands reflect the aspirations, aesthetics and lifestyles of the people that inhabit our world’s spaces.”
An Extended Look aired on Thursday night
The timing of the feature is no accident. An Extended Look at Grand Theft Auto VI premiered on Netflix on Thursday 27 August at 10pm EAT, with a six-hour exclusive window before it reached YouTube and the GTA VI site at 4am Friday morning. Press and creators who visited Rockstar North in July were expected to publish previews once it aired, per GamingBible’s reporting. The game launches 19 November on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. For the leak timeline and Rockstar’s Wednesday statement, start here; for everything confirmed so far, the GTA 6 hub has it.