Between admiration and skepticism, the gaming community is on fire. The decade-long second trailer for GTA 6 reignited an old fan obsession: scrutinizing every pixel for proof that Rockstar is about to redefine visual standards. And this time, it’s not a decor or a skin texture that attracts attention… but the cars.
An Internet user, visibly stunned by the images of the game, dropped this sentence on Reddit: “The level of detail could exceed that of Gran Turismo”. A daring statement, almost heretical in the world of automotive simulation, but which says a lot about the studio’s perceived ambitions.
Rockstar versus Gran Turismo: an unexpected duel
Comparing GTA to Gran Turismo might seem preposterous. After all, one is an open-world sandbox game, the other a technical showcase dedicated to driving lovers. However, the confrontation is not so absurd. Since Red Dead Redemption II, Rockstar has established itself as a master of detail, going so far as to integrate thermal reactions on the anatomy of horses. “They went so far as to shrink the horses’ testicles with the cold,” recalls a fan in the comments.
© Reddit @Eccel9700
GTA 6 seems ready to take up this torch. And this time, it is the vehicles that attract all the expectations. Because in the world of Vice City, cars and motorcycles are not simple travel tools: they are part of the living decor, subject to wear, rain, light reflections. “Look at the condensation on the back of this car. The depth of the lights. The graphics and details blow everyone away,” adds the user on Reddit.
Colossal resources for extraordinary realism
Behind this ambition lies an industrial war machine. The development of GTA 6 would have mobilized between 2000 and 3000 people, spread over almost eight years. “This game is a unique event. Rockstar has allocated a budget that no other developer has managed to release.”
Rockstar seems determined to make every corner of the game a technical demonstration. “Knowing that one of the focal points of GTA is the cars and vehicles, they’re going to push the limits on the level of detail they’re going to incorporate. Including on the planes.”
And the weather, so often neglected elsewhere, becomes an actor in its own right. “Personally, I can’t wait to see what the rain on the windshield will look like,” says one player. It is on these dynamic elements that GTA 6 could widen the gap with simulations frozen on circuits.
Open world realism, a complex equation
Technical prowess lies less in the raw level of detail than in the ability to maintain it in a large, populated and unpredictable environment. Unlike Gran Turismo, where each race takes place in a fixed setting, GTA 6 must deal with crowds, NPCs, weather systems and day-night cycles… all in real time.
And this is where Rockstar could succeed where few studios have dared to venture: offering photorealism not in a fixed menu or a cutscene, but right in the heart of the action. The game’s trailers do not cheat, the community assures. At Rockstar, the “marketing” image is often faithful to the controller experience in hand.
So, can GTA 6 really compete with Gran Turismo on a visual level? Technically, maybe not in extreme finesse. But in terms of visual emotion, the feeling of realism in the middle of a chase in the heart of a living world… the answer might well surprise.
Gameplay leak briefly appears online
This weekend, a short animated video related to the development of GTA 6 circulated before being removed from the Internet. Uploaded by a developer on Vimeo, it contained three extracts identified as coming from the project. The first sequence showed a male character handling a rental bike akin to a parody of LimeBike. This system had already been seen in an official capture published earlier in the year.
The other two clips featured a woman, probably Lucia, getting out of the back of a van at different points in the animation. Despite the virality of the video, these images did not provide any new information about the game. They simply confirmed the presence of mechanics already visible in the official documents.
This leak comes in a context already marked by the broadcast of a gameplay sequence generated by an AI, which went viral before its creator explained that it was a social experiment. While waiting for Rockstar’s third trailer, the community remains suspended for the next concrete revelations.