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If you’ve been waiting for some news about Grand Theft Auto 6, then you’re in luck. Since Rockstar officially announced the game was in development back in February, news about it has been relatively thin on the ground, but a huge GTA 6 leak has been posted by a hacker and subsequently confirmed real by Rockstar itself (not to mention several industry figures).
It’s a massive leak, and one that could tell us a huge amount about the direction in which Grand Theft Auto 6 is going. Story details, gameplay mechanics, setting…they’re all here, so if you are a GTA devotee, there’s lots to find. Let’s take a look at this recent GTA 6 leak and discuss the key takeaways from it.
It’s from a development build
The first thing to remember about this GTA 6 leak is that it’s mainly from development builds dating back to around 2019 or 2020 at the latest. This means that many of the features in the leak are not finalised; if things look a little wobbly or unfinished, that’s because they literally are.
This is also why, if you do manage to track down the leak (which we wouldn’t actually recommend doing), you’ll notice that there are lots of indicators that this is a development build, including temporary graphics, subtitles, and more. Take everything in the leak with a pinch of salt when it comes to the current state of GTA 6.
Rockstar and Take-Two are hitting anyone who posts it
If you post the leaks online, you might be in for a spot of trouble. Rockstar and Take-Two are launching copyright attacks on anybody who shares the leaked material, including on Reddit, Grand Theft Auto forums, and anywhere else. That means that if you have the leaked material somehow – if you downloaded it when it was still easy to find – you’d definitely do well not to post it. If you can’t find the leaks, we wouldn’t recommend seeking them out, as these companies can be very litigious and millions of dollars can often be on the line.
Story details
We learned a fair bit about the GTA 6 story from the leak. Supposedly, we will be controlling two protagonists, whose names at the moment are Jason and Lucia (which could be placeholder names). In the leaks, we see them robbing banks and committing other crimes, just as you’d expect from a GTA game.
Just as Bloomberg reported in July, GTA 6 will have a female main character for the first time in series history, although she won’t be the only playable character. She’s Latin-American, too, which is another first for the series. We don’t know how the story will work out, but given that it will apparently be inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, it’s not too much of a stretch to figure out that you’ll be watching the rapid ascent (and possible downfall) of these two figures.
Setting
As you’d expect, Grand Theft Auto 6 will be an open-world sandbox game in the same vein as its predecessors. The leaks reveal that the setting for the game is Vice City, as proven by the fact that areas like Little Haiti appear in the videos. If you’ve been hankering for a return to the hedonistic excesses of Vice City after the tale of Tommy Vercetti reached its conclusion in GTA: Vice City, it looks like you’re in luck.
Unfortunately, Grand Theft Auto 6 doesn’t seem to be taking place in the 80s; instead, it appears to take place in a modern-day version of Vice City. At one stage, a character refers to the death of LifeInvader CEO Jay Norris, which means GTA 6 takes place either concurrent to or after GTA 5. Given that GTA 5 takes place in the same universe as GTA 4, this means that we now have a sort of unofficial trilogy of games.
Gameplay
GTA 6 will likely continue the gameplay style of GTA 5; the leaks show the same sort of weight and heft to the movement of characters and cars, so don’t expect a radical reinvention in the gameplay department.
That’s not to say there’s nothing new, of course. The leaks show a player carrying a body fireman-style, so apparently you can carry bodies now. Expect to see that popping up in missions. You can once again crouch after this feature was removed in GTA 5, and characters seem to have some kind of limited inventory system which you’ll have to manage.
Not only can you crouch, but you can also go prone, which may help with what appear to be new stealth features being tested by the devs. Given that stealth hasn’t been a big feature in GTA up to this point (which hasn’t stopped Rockstar implementing forced stealth sections in the past), it’s interesting to see Rockstar shifting towards a sneakier mode of gameplay. It would make sense given our two protagonists’ supposedly down-and-out story, though.
Some features from Rockstar’s magnum opus Red Dead Redemption 2 also seem like they might make an appearance. One of the leaks shows Jason and Lucia holding up a diner in a similar way to how Arthur Morgan’s gang conducts heists in RDR2, and characters seem to interact with their environments and with each other in a very RDR2-esque manner. The leaker has also suggested that GTA 6 will have an RDR2-style conversation system, although this hasn’t been proven and it doesn’t appear to be in any of the videos.
Remember to take all of this with a huge pinch of salt. While the leaks have definitely been confirmed to be legitimate, they are from an outdated development build, and lots of things about GTA 6 are likely different at the current stage of the project. However, the leak still shows us lots of interesting details about Rockstar’s next open-world title. Rockstar itself says it will officially unveil GTA 6 when the time is right, so hopefully, it won’t be too long before we get to hear more about this exciting game.
