The first two trailers for Grand Theft Auto VI have turned the Internet upside down: ultra-detailed Vice City, dense crowds, lighting worthy of a blockbuster. The hype around GTA 6 reached a level rarely seen for an open world. But behind these surgically edited trailers, a former developer of Rockstar Games dampens expectations by reminding us how these sequences are actually made.
David O’Reilly, environmental artist at Rockstar Games from 2011 to 2023, worked on GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 Then GTA 6. Guest of the Kiwi Talkz podcast, he explains that the trailers show a very focused version of the game and warns that the final rendering will not be identical shot by shot. A warning as GTA 6 is expected on November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 And Xbox Series.
GTA 6: why this ex Rockstar says the trailers only show part of the truth
O’Reilly insists on the way in which a trailer is concretely made at Rockstar Games. “When you make a trailer, they look at where the camera is going to be, and that view is polished in a crazy way,” he explains in Kiwi Talkz. In other words, everything in the field receives priority treatment: bugs corrected urgently, finer textures, lighting reworked shot by shot. On the other hand, the rest of the open world may remain much less advanced at this stage. “The whole world doesn’t look like that,” summarizes the artist, who asks fans to keep this reality in mind.
Will GTA 6 really be less beautiful than the trailers on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series?
According to him, saying that the final game will be “less beautiful” means above all that the level of finish of the trailer will not be able to be applied to every street in Vice City. An open world must display vehicles, bustling crowds and behaviors of non-player characters in real time, while maintaining an acceptable frame rate on console. Obviously, graphic compromises appear outside of the most elaborate plans. In a chase or gunfight, the image will probably be a little less clean than in a posed trailer shot.
GTA 6: what should players really expect for 2026?
Rockstar Games indicated that the second trailer for GTA 6 was captured on PlayStation 5without pre-calculated kinematics, which shows that this level of rendering is achievable under certain conditions. Another veteran of the studio, animator Mike York, even affirms that “the game will be as beautiful as the trailer” and that the scenes shown run in real time on console. The two visions come together on one point: the trailers set the visual bar to be achieved, but on very selected sequences.
At launch, it is reasonable to expect main and cinematic missions very close to the trailers, and an open world sometimes a notch below, but already higher than GTA 5 And Red Dead Redemption 2. The real disappointment would come mainly from players taking each trailer image as a permanently valid promise.