The Ringer-Verse - 'Grand Theft Auto VI' Extended Look Instant Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Ben, Jason Concepcion, and Jomi Adeniran rendezvous to break down the first official look at 'GTA VI' gameplay via Rockstar's Netflix release of footage from the long-awaited blockbuster. They discuss whether the trailer lived up to the hype, what they learned, and what they're still wondering about with less than three months to go until the game's November 19 release. They also get into gaming's moment in the monocultural spotlight, what a synthesis of 'GTA' and 'Red Dead Redemption' might play like, the recent Cyberleek saga, Rockstar's statement about the leaks, and more. Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Jason Concepcion and Jomi AdeniranProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now more than ever, quality matters, but so does price. At Marshalls, you don't have to choose. You can get the good stuff for less, the stuff that lasts, because there's no point in tightening your belt if it's just going to break when you do. Get the good stuff in store at Marshalls today. Into the Ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Booby Lindberg, senior editor at the Ringer, button mash host. And just as Lucia has her, Jason, we have ours.

us now. Host of the ringers wait a second podcast. It's Jason Concepcion. Hi Jason. Delightful to be here. Always lovely to have you here on Buttmash and the ringerverse at large. Also with us is a midnight boy. Jomi Adenneron. Hi, Jomey. It's good, fellas. I'm ready to get back to Vice City. Let's go. Me too. We just got our first non-leaked, legally sanctioned look at Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay via the GTA6 extended look on net. We had time to take it in twice. We have hardly digested it, but we just wanted to hop on the mic and get a reaction out here even before this trailer hits YouTube. And, you know, it was nice to see some GTA gameplay and footage without a meme coin ad plastered

on top of it. That was a nice little treat. And as Jason says to Lucia, damn, worth the wait. Shall we say the same? I'm sure people are going to be going frame by frame scouring this. thing for insights. But overall impressions, I think the first needle drop in this extended look was let your love flow by the Bellamy brothers. Is that what we will be doing? We'll be letting our love flow. Jason, would you care to let some love flow? Off rip, you're just blown away by how

it looks. It looks unbelievable. It looks granular. If you're catching it like out of the corner of your eye or a little bit far away, you're like, oh, it's almost like a full. photo reel issue. And then once you get beyond that, I was overwhelmed. I was both overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Overwhelmed in that, it looks amazing. All the stuff you can do, the gunplay, et cetera. Underwhelmed in that, I didn't see anything that was like,

here's the new thing that's added to GTA. It's GTA. From what I've seen. I like the new cleaner HUD without all the stuff in it. I loved some of the new camera angles that you were seeing. and what I assume are cut scenes or maybe dynamic active action scenes appeared to be GTA to me.

I don't know, but I'm tremendously excited. Yeah, I think I'm sold. I think I'm going to get the game. What are you guys think? I think you're going to get... I was considering sitting this one out, you know? I was debating. I was on the fence.

I was like, I don't know, yeah. Nah, you guys watched the leaks? CyberLeaks sold me before this did. But yeah, we'll get into the cyber leaks. saga. Jomi, you abstained. You waited? I'm an ethical consumer. I didn't. You waited for GTA marriage to enjoy. Yeah, exactly. Between this and Avatar, I was like, no, I'm not letting you guys win. I'm watching this when I'm supposed to. But to Jason's point, man, this is a game that when they tell you it took 13 years to make, you can see, you can see why. The thing just

looks incredible. The sheen, the polish. I was talking to Jacob in the back. I was talking to Jacob in the and he was like, this is like Red Dead Redemption 2 style just put into the GTA format. The way it looks is incredible. The way it sounds, the gameplay. Yeah, it doesn't. I don't think it's reinventioning the wheel by any stretch of the imagination. But, man, when there's a part where you're out, you're playing as Jason, shooting the back of a car, it stops.

And then you switch to Lucia and you start driving. And I'm like, all right, that kind of does feel, that kind of does feel cool. That kind of does feel like a move, you know what I mean? That was a next gen moment. Yeah, that was obviously next gen. GTA5 had character switching, but the system that they've set up here, and there were still some questions about how exactly this would work, and we got to look at it here.

It seems super simple and streamlined. It looks like, at least on PlayStation, you press R1, and that's that, and you just switch characters. There's one shot we see of Lucia parachuting off a building, and you press R1, you see a map screen, and then you just switch to Jason, who is presumably somewhere on the other side of the city, sort of in real time.

But you are alluding to this, there's a car chase going on. Lucia's literally riding shotgun. Jason's driving the car. And you could just do an instantaneous change, which is pretty interesting because it suggests that there are multiple ways to play this game and to approach each mission,

if you want to be the wheelman or wheelwoman, if you want to be the drive-by shooter, you can do that. It seems like there's some flexibility in terms of, do you want to stick together as a couple? Do you want to go off on your own and do different things, divide and conquer? So we still don't know exactly how that's going to work, but it sure seems like you can kind of take your own personally tailored approach to playing through this thing, which that's quite compelling, I think.

It's less like, all right, this character does this mission, that character does that mission. You can kind of do it the way you want based on what we, seen so far. We got a little bit of a look at the honor system. Yes. I will be interested to see this being GTA, how that will work. Since this is a game and a game series that I think, you know, incentivizes extremely dishonorable behavior at all times. Yeah. Right. Can you still go to the strip club and be honorable is my question. Right. If I go there, if I spend all If I throw all my ones, right?

Yeah. If I throw, hey, I'm going to get you out of here, baby. Yeah. Don't put your hands on anyone. We're going to get you to medical school. You don't have to live like this. I can help you. I can save you.

Is that ethical hoops? I'm just wondering. Maybe so. That is one of my big questions about this. And I want to get into sort of this hybrid, this synthesis of GTA and Red Dead, which it seems like we're seeing here, just to pull back a bit. So what we actually saw here, because as some. people might be listening to this, they may not have been able to view this yet. It's kind of a flex

to do it this way at all, right, to do the Netflix premiere, the six-hour exclusive window. Not a lot of games, I think, would command that kind of crossover attention to eventize this, even though they did say, you know, people can co-stream this. And so it's not fully exclusive. Nonetheless, there's something to the Netflix unveiling. I don't know whether you guys had this experience. I was expecting this tile to be plastered on the home screen. It was not, for me, at least. You had to go find it. I know.

I searched GTA. Nothing came up. I had to search the full Grand Theft Auto to get to it. It wasn't highlighted on the homescreen, at least for me, which was somewhat surprising. Nonetheless, I was having some issues connecting. It was asking me if I wanted to update my app. I was like, this is probably a terrible time to do that. And I gave up on that.

So I think they were sort of swamped, as we've seen with, you know, Tyson fights or whatever else. Sometimes there's too much demands. but it seemed to have held up. But people didn't know what this extended look would look like. And so it turns out to be a roughly 26-minute compilation of footage. And there's kind of a cold open, which is just six uninterrupted minutes from one mission. At that point, I was wondering if that was what this was going to be, just one entire mission, which would have been also quite a flex.

But it still is, I think, to just say, here's the game and it speaks for itself, right? This is just all gameplay. It's not voiceover. There are no taglines. There's no, hey, here are the new features we're highlighting. It's just like, here it is. You want it, don't you? Which is, I guess, not surprising.

But not a lot of games, I think, could just lead with the gameplay itself and be confident that that would get everyone as hyped as this seems to have. Did that first mission, like, did that look like, remind you guys of the first mission of GTA-5? Because that's the first thing I thought of. Yeah, a little bit. It was just like going through like going through the hallway, things are happening. I'm like, okay, to your like original point, Jason, nothing new. This is, I was like, this is, this is, this seems very familiar to me.

In a way that like, I don't, I don't mind it, right? It's one thing for it to be like, okay, they're just taking all the old stuff and making it new again for a new generation. But it just, it just felt kind of like, oh, I recognize this. I've seen this before. I think the thing that will be interesting to me is, you know, thinking about the leap from Red Dead One to Red Dead 2. Red Dead 2. I remember seeing the trailer for the first time,

the volumeric god rays and all the animals and all the beautiful and you're thinking, okay, at least I was. Looks like Red Dead, but prettier, much the what I'm thinking now. But then when you fired it up, it was a significantly different experience

primarily in how much slower it was. The progression was meaningfully slowed down consciously. So they clearly wanted you to feel like, hey, this is the 19th century. You're taking it slower. You're getting on your horse. It's going to take a minute to get your rope out, all this stuff. And so that is part of me wants to know. I almost wish there was a little bit of a developer monologue here just to understand like, yes, this looks incredible. And I had those, that was my baseline. I knew it was going to look incredible, of course. But what's moving through the world going to look like.

I think if there is a criticism that you could have of grand theft over the years, it's like combat is wonky. You're trying to look at a guy. The reticle goes here. You're looking there. How do I center my camera? It looked very seamless, this version of it. There's that moment where Lucia is like one hand reloading a shotgun and walking through

like a trap house. That was sick. That was sick. And it had like the camera was just kind of like centered in a way that. I don't think I've seen before in a GTA game, not off to the shoulder. It was just kind of centered in a very cinematic way. And so I wanted those kind of quality of life, minute-to-minute play experiences are really the thing that I'm interested in now. And to your point, Ben, I think we talk a lot about monoculture as people who think about pop culture.

I think this is it. If you want to know where monoculture is right now, I think it's Grand Theft Auto 6. Yeah, which is really exciting to me. I'm just, I'm looking forward to playing this game. I'm also looking forward to other people playing this game. and just wallowing in the impressions and just the weeks of reactions to this thing and the hot takes and the this puddle doesn't look good enough discourse probably. But I'm really looking forward to this just kind of dominating the culture for some time because,

yes, we have fewer monocultural moments. We've always had fewer of those when it comes to video games. So it's nice for video games to get the spotlight like that. And if this is just a once in a 13 year event, I'm just a once in a 13 year event, I'm just going to give myself over to it. I want to read everyone's impressions and complaints and praise and all the rest of it and just live this life from November 19th through the end of the year and just embed fully in GTA6. Maybe at some point there will be GTA6 fatigue and we will all be ready to move on to the next thing.

But I'm nowhere near that yet, which makes sense. Five is a current game. It is. Five is an active current game right now. Yep. And that's what gave Rockstar intake to the long leash that they have had here because they're printing money, as we learned from other leaks, which, again, only makes the company look stronger and more powerful. It's like, oh, no, you revealed that we're generating a million dollars a day with our micro transactions in GTA online or whatever, whatever we would do now. But because of that, that totally took the pressure off for them to take their time.

And, you know, it's not like there's any one thing in GTA6 or any GTA game that you can't find in any other game. As you were sort of saying, you could watch a minute or two of this and it might look like a lot of other games. It's the combination of all of them in one package. And then it's the realism and the granular detail and all of that. And maybe that's because Rockstar is uniquely talented and great at game development. It might also be because they got this. first mover advantage. They had the first GTA before everyone else had GTA likes that kind of open world crime simulator. And now it's just this unbeatable brand so that they can take

their time and perfect and polish this thing. And there was a preview piece that came out this week in Dazed Magazine, which had interviews with a lot of rock star developers and it was actually pretty illuminating. And one of the little tidbits there, the team that's working on this game is twice the size of the team that worked on Red Dead. And they have offices everywhere. They have one branch in LA dedicated almost solely to the world of NPCs in game pedestrians. So everyone's like, wow, wow, look how lifelike these NPCs are. Look at the variety of body types.

Look at the animations. Look at how they have personalized the way that these characters look and sound. It's because they just have a whole office that's doing that. That's their whole job. most companies do not have the luxury of time or money to devote to that. And so you have to cut corners somewhere. And that's the GTA difference, I think, is that they don't have to cut corners. They will just delay the game a year or two years or however many years it takes to deliver a product that they think will satisfy everyone.

So that's where we are. And we're just a few months away. It's going to be that time, fellas. I've always been on the track that this game is never coming out. I will never see the lot of day. never Jason this is the winds of winter for you I was the first one

it might have been like one of the first pods we did on GTA and when it's supposed to come out last year and I was like it's not coming out in 2025 you were the George has no pages of the GTA pod just it's not coming out in 2025 it's impossible

then it gets delayed in 2026 and I'm like November 26 I'm like I don't know you can still push that to like April 27 if you really wanted to right And so the fact that like, fellas, we're really here. We're only like a couple months away from like one of, to your point, Jason, one of the big moments of monoculture finally coming to a head when GTA6 comes out.

I mean, you talked about it on, wait a second, great episode. You should listen to it where the military is offering people four days off to play the game. Yeah. If you reenlist for two more years. This is not a bit. This is not a joke. This is really happening right now. And the fact that in a couple months,

going to be able to like go into this game and like play. It's still kind of surreal to me. Yeah. I always wonder when you're the person who's playing in the captured footage that a billion people are going to watch, do you, do you mess up intentionally, occasionally to make it more lifelike? Because you're right, Jason, like this seemed much more streamlined than GTA combat we've seen before. Whoever was playing barely missed a shot in these 26 minutes. It's like, this is not quite true to my personal experience where I will probably look for a little. less competent. I was wonder, do you just kind of, you know, do you sandbag a little bit?

Do you just like wide right on a shot just to sort of simulate the authentic GTA playing experience? But then you don't want to make it look like the combat system is unintuitive and that you can't target the character you're trying to shoot. So this person was practiced. This was a professional they got playing this thing. It might also be that the playable character in question, either Jason or Lucia, in the scenes, had, been training at the shooting range, doing their jogging, you know, like building up the character bench pressing in a way that bench pressing, you know, not eating too many hamburgers and stuff doing the backyard boxing and just working so that they're targeting is on point. That's another thing that I can't wait to see is the RPG elements of this. They've really, all the

reporting points to them really integrating more RPG elements, which they've had, you know, since for a while in GTA and certainly Red Dead too, took it to a different level, but it really feels like they have tomagachiaized the experience to the point that your playable characters are going to feel like, I think this is the hope, living, breathing people that you have to make sure

they're, you know, their glucose is low, they're getting lean protein, and they're getting the right amount of cardio. Yeah, and you've got to get your sleep, which is challenging for me as someone. It's just white knuckling it through sleep deprivation at all times. Evidently, that actually takes a toll on your character attributes, which I'm sure it does in real life too.

It's just that I'm too tired to notice how impaired I am. But unfortunately, when I'm playing the game, my stats are going to significantly decrease if I don't go back to the safe house and get some Zs or something. I have been wondering about that. So there's precedent, obviously, San Andreas, right? Yeah. You can bulk up or slim down.

You can hit the weights that affects, you know, how much stamina you have that sort of thing. So we're bringing that back, and that's part of the red deadification here. And for anyone who didn't read Jason's Red Dead 2 review way back when on the ringer.com, what a great website. I'd encourage you all to do that because you really touched on that deliberate, uncompromising pace, right? This was like we're in the old west, you know?

This is like, things should be hard, right? The button presses should be kind of complicated. things should not necessarily come easy to you. And it seems like what they're aiming for, based on everything we've seen and read, is some sort of synthesis of the two, where we had the over-the-top old-school GTA, where despite occasional RPG elements, you could kind of run rampant, do what you want, the world was your oyster, you could go on some incredible killing spree. And yes, maybe the military would call out the tanks at some point,

but you know, you were free to cause havoc and mayhem. And this game, which seems to be placing some limitations on you. And so what I keep wondering is, where's the sweet spot? Do they find the perfect balance? Do they find the best of both worlds of RDR and GTA? Or do you somehow detract from this perfect sandbox you've built? Let us play in it. Let us do our thing, right?

And so if you feel like, uh-oh, suddenly I have to fuel up my car when I want to escape the cops, right? Which is a neckdown, right? You can run out of glass. It's like, do I want that? Is that cinematic? You know, French connection. Like, are you pulling over for a refill? No way.

Right? And so, but then there's something satisfying about that simulation aspect. Like, that really grounds you in this world, maybe makes it more immersive. So where's the sweet spot there? Like, if you can't carry your entire arsenal on your person at all times, if you have to stash weapons, if you have to stash money, if you have a stamina system with the hand-to-hand combat, if there are things that are kind of tying your hands, does that get frustrating or does that feel like, no,

actually, we've elevated the formula. And so this is much more satisfying because it feels more real. So where do you come down on that, Jason? I hope they do that. Maybe this will be divisive and people won't like that. I think the thing that is sustained GTA, GTA5 in particular, all the way through here, is the role playing. entire like servers of people who are like cops and robbering this experience to make it feel real.

And I think that's a thing that Red Dead explored to me very effectively and that I think GTA could go even further with. I think that they could take it there so that when this game launches and develops a fanbase of its own and a role playing fan base of its own, there's more tools in that box. to create that role play world of like, yeah, I'm running from the cops. I got to call my guy and be like, this is a thing that happened, by the way, recently in L.A.

There was a guy running from the cops on a dirt bike. He called somebody and was like, I'm running out of gas. Leave me like a can of gas in the park. And he rode into the park, found the can of gas that his friend left, and, like, dumped it into the thing and drove off. think that would be really cool. Yeah.

Personally. Would people be frustrated by that? Maybe. Yeah. But I hope they do it. I think it's tough for me. Like, because yeah, on the system is great. It's a way to like level players out and, you know, you could, you're very much welcome to play

the game, the crazy way or whatever. But you can't do that and also bring back the six star. Right? Because now I'm, that's what I'm going to want to do. First thing I hop in the game. All right. Let me get that six star. Let me see what it's.

it's all about. GTA 5, we only had 5, right? Four had 6, so they're bringing that back. I would like to have some fun. Get the military caught on me,

at least one time. But I can't do that. If the honor system will play, now my game plays hampered. I don't know. I was wondering about this too. I was talking to a friend of mine, my oldest friend who we have a years-long tradition

of whenever a GTA game comes out, which doesn't happen often. We drop everything and just merit on it, take time off from work, whatever it takes, unless your job is playing GTA, which is if you can work that out, the way that we have, then do that. But he was wondering, you know, as this gets more and more lifelike, does there then become kind of a moral quam about simulating just completely unrestricted violence? You know, like one of the leaked scenes we saw the other day, you're just riding down a beach

and everyone is wowed by the waves and the lighting, but also just the variety and body types, it's kind of incredible. You know, so often in games, you just have a crowd of NPCs. They're all sort of shaped the same, you know? They look more or less the same. Here, it is actually individually tailored.

And so if this game looks this good, then, you know, it's like you're riding down a beach in a post-Bondi beach world, not to get too heavy about things. It's like, is there any hesitation on Rockstar's part to just let you go wild, you know, to like create these incredibly differentiated NPCs who seem like lifelike and then let you waste them all, you know, to your heart's content? And, you know, there's always been some moral panic surrounding GTA, right?

And that was more true in the early 2000s than it is today. Even back then, you went to a beach and there might be like three NPCs and some paper flying around. You know, it was just kind of a ghost town. And yet back then, because it was new, this was the post-columbine world, today it looks incredibly primitive. But at the time, it seemed super lifelike. And obviously, you had the whole uproar over, you know, think of the children, right? We're creating a whole generation of people who are conditioned to wanton violence from GTA.

And I think that most people, at least who study this scientifically and in good faith find that there's no connection between actual violence. and playing pilot video games. But I do wonder about the backlash, just the more realistic this gets. And we learned from that dazed preview, it does seem as if you can just get a wanted level via open carry. I mean, it's not clear exactly like, can you carry up pistol or something? Is that okay?

If you're just strutting around with an assault rifle or something, cops are going to come after you. So it's not just that NPCs are going to have some scared emote and are going to dive out of the way or something. Like, you're a wanted man. if you're just wondering around, right? And so... What happened in my country?

This is America. This is America. Second Amendment. If I have a rocket launcher, I should be able to walk into a Walmart, right? Pick up my stuff and leave. It's un-American.

This is crazy. And nonetheless. This is extremely un-American. Wow. So I wonder whether... And I don't know if that's because of fears of a backlash or whether it's because this system, this franchise has to evolve somehow.

can't just be cookie cutter, carbon copy, GTA, but a little bit prettier. And so maybe this is one way to make the series evolve and mature is to say, actually, violence has to mean something here. There have to be some stakes. But then the people who play GTA, and this is not a small group, who play it less for the story than to just run around and destroy stuff, then I just wonder whether, you know, you're going to feel like, ah, I'm kind of handcuffed here figuratively and literally, if I actually do what you have conditioned me to do in all the previous 3D GTA. So I'm hoping that this is a happy medium. And look, there are six stars still.

So I'm sure that you can get up to new good in this game. I don't think, you know, you're going to get pulled over for running a red or something. And that's going to be that. So I do have faith that, you know, they will find some perfect balance here. But that'll be an adjustment, I think. If you actually have to consider, oh, wait, I have to kind of cosplay. Like, I have to do a little larping here because I can't just run around and do whatever I want and expect no consequences for that. So a more thoughtful approach to playing this game.

That might actually be refreshing. I'm kind of excited about that. There is a part in the extended look where they're running from the cops. They switch cars. They burn the car. And they get into this, like, little van. And they stop at a stop sign. And that was notable because I don't know if you guys have ever played GTA.

but I've never stopped at a stop sign. No, no, no. I've never stopped at a red light. Yeah. So I'm looking around, I'm like, okay, you actually might have to, you got to follow the rules here. Ah, this is, it's going to be very new. I imagine a lot of people are going to come in with GTA.

I'm going to blow this whole thing out. I'm going to go crazy. And then when the game, when the game, you know, disrewards you for that, but like, well, what happened? I thought I was playing GTA. They got to, like, lay, the first thing going to be like, hey, guys, if you do some crazy messed up stuff, it will affect your gameplay. We got to let you know now because people will come in, have a ball, and then realize, uh-oh, I kind of, I may have messed up there. Some of the big

questions that I had about this, which I wrote about at the Ringer a couple months ago, I mean, one is just like, will the wow factor be there, as we're saying? Because GTA5 came out a couple console generations ago, but it keeps coming out. And so it has looked better and better. And so has everything else. And the leaps from one generation to the next get smaller and smaller. So will you watch this thing and think, whoa, my mind is blown, my jaw is dropped? And debatable, right? I mean, it does to some extent look like GTA, but better, but prettier. And I would say, if anything, this might undersell how impressive it will look in action, I think, because even though, as is the case with Rockstar typically, it says captured on PS5, like this is

gameplay. I don't know if it's base PS5 or PS5 pro. I guess they could say captured on PS5, and it could be PS5 Pro for the privileged PS5 pro owners like myself. I asked Rockstar, they have not answered about that yet. But I think the streaming, you know, like there's some compression when you're watching something on Netflix as opposed to just playing it in 4K on your own TV. And then I think the interactivity adds so much to it too. It's like, you know, when you feel like you're in that world as opposed to watching footage of someone else play, it just it hits harder. right, than it does when you're watching something that you are not directly controlling. So it looks incredible, you know, that alone.

But like the nuances, just the lighting, right? The nighttime scenes, the atmospheric depiction of VyCity, enhanced by the needle drops and the soundtrack. I was wondering, because, you know, a lot of this is interacting with a phone and you can sort of scroll social media feeds. and we saw some streaming stuff here, whether the music playing would be personalized, too, because that is how most people play music. Now it's not so much just listening to whatever's on the radio. You're curating your own playlist.

It seems like from what we've heard so far that they are still sticking with the radio model, right? Which might suit the game better, even if it seems slightly anachronistic. But there's just nothing that can compare with that feeling of just like cruising down a street in Vice City, the sun is setting. The perfect song is playing.

It's just like something about seeing those little scenes, you know, more so than the havoc. That's what makes me want to get my hands on this game. And it's a strange thing because it's like, I could just go outside, you know? I live in New York City. There's a lot going on out there. And yet I want to be in the game seeing the simulation of real life

way more than I want to just go stand on the street and watch actual people. walk around something about that it's just like so much more impressive to me than real life it's like I'm watching them

kayak I can just go kayaking it's not that far from me I live near the Hudson River but I'm probably not gonna do that I did that once but kayaking in the game I mean I don't have to get all wet

and rent a boat and such so the water's probably better in GTA than Australia yeah yeah for sure potentially less toxic too but but yeah like it's those little moments that stood out to me the most about the trailer.

Even just like, you know, the scene of the fanboats in the swamp, the water, and I don't know if it was manatees or what just swimming around underwater, scuba diving, right? Like it was an interesting choice because there was just a compilation, just a montage of all different, you know, it's like plopping us into part of one mission, then we're going to a different neighborhood, we're seeing something else, just a little snippet of this activity or that activity. It was just like, let's give everyone a cross-section, a sense of what is available to them, even though it's a bit disjointed to see it all without any kind of connective tissue. Were there any like side activities that you spotted here? Anything like that that was kind of off the beaten path that impressed you?

Not so much. I mean, the phone stuff is very interesting to me. To your point about wow factor and just stuff looking better, that doesn't last. Yeah. As we all know. Like that is the. Looks fade. for five minutes, you know?

And then once you're in the game, you know, it's like I think about what San Andreas or any of the old GTA, what that experience was like before the new game came out. And I was just like locked it. You're not thinking about the graphics at that point. But the phone part of it is interesting. I've been playing cyberpunk 2077. And I think that has been a great utilization of devices in a game. You know, you can text.

You can call. You can do other stuff. And it's pretty seamless as part of your interaction with the other NPCs in the game. And I would expect that Rockstar would do something better and more relatable as a personal device in the year 2026 to the player. Like I would expect there to be, are there podcasts? Are there podcast episodes that come out like over the course of the game? you know, like it's been five days in game time, and there's a new podcast episode of this episode of this,

the Joe Rogan of Rockstar, you know, like, I, I expect that. Like, I expect them to do something like that. And I certainly expect that texting, phoning, streaming, video calls, video conferencing, all of that stuff is going to be implemented in a really interesting way. So that's, yeah, is the relationship between the, character and their devices and the internet, I think, is something I'm really interested in seeing. Yeah. And I don't want the totally personalized experience. I don't want to, like, import my own

playlist into TTSX, even if eventually you could do that in a PC mod. I want this curated for me. I want to see the rock star experience and what that looks like and sounds like. I thought just we got a glimpse of scuba diving. That looked, you know, pretty nice. Just underwater environments. The water looks just flexing now. Yes, the water looks. Just showing off, man. You're just showing off now. You go underwater? Yep.

You don't drown instantly when you touch water. That's nice. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. It's just, you know, like the facial animations, pretty impressive, even when you're not looking at a cutscene.

It's just like that rock star touch of just doing everything a little bit more and a little bit better than anyone else does, just with a bigger budget and more time and attention to detail. Lots of racing footage in this trailer, street racing, dirt bike racing. Not that that's brand new, but it looks like there's going to be a big emphasis on that in this game as well. I mean, I'm looking forward to seeing some of the countryside, you know, off the beaten path. Like we saw a lot of cityscapes here in different neighborhoods of Vice City.

But aside from that swampy area, we didn't see so much like the Mount Chilliad equivalent kind of, you know, just wondering the back roads of. of GTA, which is often my favorite. South Florida not known for its elevations, I don't think so. We'll see about that. Yeah. Maybe not mountains, but yeah, I want to lose myself in the wilderness a little bit and see what's waiting for me out there.

And yes, you can pet the dog, so we confirmed that in GTA6. Yes. And that is when you see that honor boost, right? So this was something that came out in the leaked footage as well. And yeah, we've seen this, you know, this is a red dead thing as well. but that goes hand in hand with what we were talking about before, with like, how naughty can we be in this game? What will the consequences of being bad in this game be?

Like, you don't, you know, to play GTA and be a choir boy, basically, it seems like we're wasting the potential, but then... That's the thing that makes me think, like, Jesus Christ, what is bad in GTA? Right. Like, serial killer type. tight gameplay. Yeah. Yeah.

It better be egregious. That was in one of the weak clips, I think, like, you know, Jason was in a fight. And then only when you start beating someone when they're down, do you get the honor subtraction? Because so often in games, it's this very binary kind of cut and dry, you know, paragon or, you know, it's just like the obvious good choice or the obvious bad choice. I'm going to assume it'll be a little more nuanced and common. complex and subtle than that, I hope. And then how big an impact on gameplay does that have? Does it affect your relationship with Lucia and Jason?

Does it affect, you know, what you're able to do in the city? Is it just like are NPCs cowering in fear when you approach or hailing you as a hero? Or are there real consequences to that? And does that, again, enhance the gameplay, make you feel like you're really in this world? Or do you then feel the pressure to perform the way that you do? It's like in GTA4, I often had the experience because Nico is constantly like wanting to turn over a new leaf, wanting to stick to the straight and narrow. And then as soon as I get control of Nico, I'm committing heinous atrocities. And then we're going right back to the cutscene where he's like, man, sure got to stop being bads all the time.

And that always felt slightly discordant. So I wonder if this is the way of trying to resolve that tension. It's like, you know, trying to us into better behavior, but not being on our best behavior that I wouldn't want. I was just going to say, like, how do you all feel about the racing? Because one of the things I like about 2077 is you can be like, you know what, I don't want to do the street race to the character who's offering it to you. I'm good. Yeah. And what do we think?

Is that something that you would want to in a GTA? Obviously, you can just not, you can just let your cue fill up. But do you want that to be part of your character's response system? Just be like, you know what? I'm not really a straight street race guy person offering me this. I'm good. Yeah. So here's the thing, Jason.

Yeah. It's probably the closest we'll get to a Midnight Club 3 double edition. Gameplay in 2026. Yeah. So at this point, you might as well. Let's have some fun. You know, let's live our childhood memories out and pick a race from time to time. Yeah, there was like a lot of footage on that with the dirt.

and like in the city and all that. So like, I mean, they put emphasis in time and money in there. You got to at least see what it's all about before you, you know, just be like, all right, I'm good off this race and stuff. Yeah. It could be fun. Driving in GTA is not my strong suit or in real life, for that matter. Very little experience behind the wheel.

So when I play, I typically hand off the driving sequences. My friend is the wheelman. We kind of do a Jason and Lucia real time swap of the controller. We have our particular set of skills, and that's not mine necessarily. But no, I hope that, you know, it's good when they at least make you dabble in the range of activities, right? So maybe there's an initial race that you have to do or something. And then beyond that, maybe you can go as deep into that as you want and you can specialize and you can take your pick and kind of, you know, make it a little less linear and experience. But I do want to kind of be forced to sample at least every system in the game, you know,

give me the guided tour of what's available to me and then give me some choice about what I want to do. But I'm also wondering, you know, this was one of my big questions coming in. It's like, okay, we're talking about maybe a hybrid form of gameplay. Also, there's going to be some shift in tone here from the over-the-top old school sort of sophomoric GTA that we know. And there's still certainly some of that here, right? There's definitely some some lewd humor. We've still got the like satirical ads on the TV that you can sit and watch that sort of thing. But we do have a female playable protagonist, a non-white playable protagonist, a couple, a love story.

They're really going for the Bonnie and Clyde thing here. And romance has never really been at the heart of the TTA experience, you know? Hot coffee, some sex, strip clubs, yes, but meaningful, romantic. relationships, no. So we don't know exactly how that's going to work. Can we trust Rockstar to do that well? We still don't know whether that aspect of the game will be satisfying. But I thought some of the little character moments here, you know, like when they're ready, they're getting ready to go to the meet. They're talking about what to wear, whatever it is. Like some of that more, more sensitive, lower key stuff, that was kind of encouraging, that this isn't all going to be sort of silly,

totally over the top GTA as it has in the past. So I'm worried. Actually, this is great, Jason, because I just want to take people backaways to our dispatch episode. Oh, yeah. You were unlucky in love. Play dispatch.

Unlucky in love in a way that the creators of the game are like virtually impossible. I didn't know you could strike out that hard. You got to listen to that episode that could not believe it. And so for GTA6, it turns out that there is a of a romance thing, right? Like, you can, depending on, like, if you and Jason and, like, if you guys hang out, outside of missions, do the whole thing.

Like, whether or not you end up as a couple at the end of the game is based on how you play with those two characters and how you interact. And so now I'm like, oh, man, because it didn't go well in dispatch, which was bone dry, easy, anybody, a monkey with two fingers and a brain could have done it. And now I have to do this in GTA6 Among the millions of other things going on, the honor system, trying to get them off the street, the whole thing.

Fellas, it's cooked. Lucia will leave you somehow in this game. And you will not be able to switch to her character anymore. You will blaze a new trail in Grand Theft Auto. It's forever alone. It's tough, man. I'm already thinking about, I'm already thinking about what's going to happen at the end of the game.

It's going to be like, I need her to be there for me. And she's not going to be there because I was out at Strick Club too late at night at 3, 4 a.m. Yeah. That's covered your tracks. Cook. And do they go all the way?

Not to spoil Bonnie and Clyde, but not a happy ending in that movie and story and actual real-life couple. Are we heading for a tragedy or can we change that? Will there be multiple endings? I was also wondering, would there be any sign that things are dated just because of how protracted the development has been? that we've had a 13-year gap, not that the game was in active development that entire time. Obviously, they made RDR in the middle.

But would we be able to see, like, oh, this is probably an idea that they had in 2017 or something. And here we are in 2026. And it seems of that era because each GTA is kind of a time capsule. It's like, oh, right, this is what life was like, you know, at the time the game came out. I don't know about you guys. I didn't see any particular. I mean, other than the reliance on the radio, maybe, it doesn't seem. as if there's anything that hit me over the head, like, oh, yeah, this is, this is a 2010s relic

in my 2026 game necessarily. And maybe it's kind of a collage of eras and memes and Florida people. But, you know, it seemed more or less of this moment as far as we could tell from this trailer, right? For sure. The only thing that was, I was thinking about was the Wix, the guy in the first, the first scene. At the Wix, I don't know if you're familiar with the Wicks. There were a lot of the hairstyles. Yes, there were, there's a certain, you know,

not a lot of people rocking the Jomi cut in, in that scene that I saw. They ain't got the high, they ain't got the high tape of fate. I was like, okay, Wix, all right, for sure. That's like, you know, I mean, it's not like way out the way. This is like, you know, early, like, you know, COVID, early 2020, 2021 type stuff. But I mean, people probably still even rocking it now to this day. But I was just like, oh, okay. I was just like, interesting.

I didn't know Rockstar was that deep into it. You know what I mean? I don't know Rockstar had feet on the ground journalism. Yeah. But clearly, they're locked in. They know a ball. Yeah, there is a meme about how just every black character in a video game has this kind of like dreads comb over kind of Miles Morales look, right?

And there's a little bit of that here, but at least some variety. I mean, obviously they're going for verisimilitude and respectful. life-like portrayals and they've talked a big game about how they've embedded a whole team in Miami for research and, you know, they're trying to be authentic and everything. For research. Yes. Dude, could you imagine being those guys? Yeah. I have a big expense.

My strip club trip. I got to sport the game. I got to snort this Coke. Hey, baby listen. One thing Onyx told me last night when I, when we were getting out of the club, you're very interesting comment to me about the. the culture of the place. Baby, Tyler Hero, you know, I was, I was, I was going to go home. Yeah.

Well, Tyler Hero was like, come out. I was like, I had to do it. You know, we were one up. We went to, you know, it was just, I got home at 6 a.m. But I got to do it for Rockstar, baby. It's for the fans. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing that seems slightly, you know, we've seen this before. It's like the, the bullet time, slow motion kind of landing head shots. And then the kill replays, you know, You hit a headshot and then we flash to like the slow motion blood spatter. I feel like we've seen enough of that maybe over the past decade or two. That feels slightly dated to me, maybe.

But I did notice, as you said, Jason, like the UI looks pretty clean here. Very clean. And maybe that's just a- Noticably clean. Yeah, maybe that's just the choice they made for this trailer. I'm sure it's customizable. And you can load it up with mini-maps or whatever else you want. But, yeah, there was not a ton on the screen here, which just made it more cinematic.

And, you know, I want, yeah. I want a dynamic replay of like my action scenes, my gunfights, where I can just play it back and the engine cuts it like an action movie, like fucking John Wick. And then I can just rewatch the play. Yeah, I guess they're they're aiming for it just looking like that in real time. Yeah. That's the goal here. But we'll see if they get there. You know, another thing that we still have no.

idea of and like we're pretty late in the game here obviously like pre-orders opened a while ago so they asked people to buy this game before actually showing them the game and many people obliged did not need to see it in action but and it's not as if they've really like done hands-on previews and stuff a lot further before release but at least relative to when pre-orders started they did one thing we still have no idea about is the multiplayer component which ultimately that's that's that's going to be the centerpiece of this thing for a lot of people, right? I mean, sure, this thing will come out for PS6 or PS7 or whatever if we even still are making consoles at that point and there's any RAM lift in the world. But for the staying power of this thing and ultimately the money

minting power of this thing, it's going to be whatever the successor is to GTA online. And we still have no idea what the plan is for that. And GTA5 launched initially without GTA online. And then that launched shortly after, and then it took a while for it to find its stride. Maybe the same thing will happen here, but we don't even really know. Like, an online listing did specify that it's a single player experience, but obviously not permanently. So for how long? What are they going to do?

Is there going to be a version of GTA online that sort of swallows the existing GTA online? Will there just be a GTA online too? Will there be some hub where you can play in multiple cities? It's like we have no idea of how they're going to handle that, which is pretty wild this close to release. GTA 5 Online came out like a couple weeks after, right? Yeah. Yeah. I imagine with the way it's, I mean, 13 years, it might be a minute, right?

This might be like a 2027 outfit. Like, it just because you put so much effort, and again, everything we've been talking about for the last hour or so, about how much effort, how much detail. how granular that this story in this world, what it looks like and how it feels like, right? To now then do that and have to like pour it in how many, you know, millions of people to play in like a different server, whatever it may be. Brothers, it just seems like, who, let's pump the brakes on this.

We just got your GTA 6. We already gave you all GTA 6. We'll work on the online and the meet in the, in the, in the intern. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think, I think two things about the online. The first is that they don't meaningfully need to reinvent the wheel on that. It will, my guess is it will be, it will look in large part exactly like GTA5 online, various events,

a kind of co-op-ish kind of multiplayer experience where you can also be adversarial towards other players. I think that my question, and knowing nothing, is, I'm with Jomey, I think it's going to take a while. it's going to take longer than GTA 5, and for the simple reason of, they're probably not going to be able to use the GTA 5 infrastructure. They're probably going to have to build more resources, right, or compile more compute, et cetera, server racks, et cetera,

to run GTA6 multiplayer independently of Gt5. They're not just going to pull the plug and say, let's move all these computers over GTA6, right? They're not going to do that. And so I think that's going to take a minute. considering how hard it is to get computer stuff these days. I think it might, I think it might take a while. We'll see.

I'll certainly have plenty of time. I mean, my heart will be content to just run around this, this massive virtual vice city without anyone else for some number of weeks or months because it's going to take that long to see all that there is to see. So we saw a lot. Among the things we didn't see that we haven't talked about, the last voiceover line in this look, you know, it's sort of a self-congratulatory patting themselves on the back. Maybe these are the glory days. If this right now was all that there is all the time,

it would be perfect. Trust me is what we hear. And that's almost a message to us from Rockstar. And a lot of people did trust them that they would deliver after 13 years. And I think this largely lives up to the hype based on what we saw. But is there anything that we didn't see that you are still really wondering about aside from the multiplayer, the romance, some of those aspects, just anything big or small that, you know, you're still, show me this. Planes? Oh, yes. Aircraft of any kind.

Yes, yes, yes. And if I'm scuba diving, where is my cartel suburb? That'd be great. Asking the real questions. Yeah. So, you know, we didn't see entire classes of vehicles that I fully expect to be in this game. So that is interesting to me. We didn't in this look, at least.

Thanks to Cyber League. Yeah. We got a glimpse. Right, yes. No, it's true for a game that's built around jacking cars, like helicopters, planes, even going back to like the dodo, which was barely airborne, just being able to experience the city that way and get the bird's eye view look. And especially in this, if you can just parachute from anywhere from a plane, I mean, yeah.

So that's a big thing that they withheld here. That's a good one. Anything, Jomi, that you're itching to see still? No, I was thinking the same thing. Yeah. Like multitude of cars, planes, vehicles. I mean, again, the extended look was very story-oriented, so I can understand why we didn't get to all those.

But I was like, man, we're not going to see no Titans, you know, no nothing, like a fagio, nowhere. Like, what's going on? What happened to my, what happened to my game? Nah, that was, that was mostly for me. Also, like, I mean, the, you mentioned the last line of the, of the extended look. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, I know who that is. Bobby Moynihan.

I was like, I know that. Yeah, there were some recognizable Stephen Root for sure. Stephen Root. Stephen Root, the guy in there. And so I'm like, okay, they kind of rock star getting in the bag? I want to see who else they got in this thing. There are some, like, rumor folks. I'm sure the leaks that you guys, that you guys.

guys have watched Rockstar if you're watching. I didn't watch it at least. I'm, I'm a G with with it. But I'm sure that they're like, I mean, if you're going to, you know, give a Stephen Rue and Bobby Moynihan, sure, there's a lot of other people in the cut in the story. I'm interested to see Wells is entering the world of Vice City and GTA 6 that we might know of. Yeah. Although, you know, sometimes I find the celebrity drop-ins almost a little distracting, almost takes me out of the narrative a little bit, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to say, don't give me Stephen Root, if you're offering Stephen Root to me. But sometimes it can be a little bit like, you know, oh, right.

I'd say something right now. If I'm playing a game and I hear Shea Wiggum, 10 out of 10. It's the weirdest game of a lot time. I tell you that right now. Yeah. Well, this was pretty darn impressive. I guess before we finish, we should just talk a little bit about the CyberLeaks saga.

Even though Jomi has remained untainted by any illicit leaks, I'm sure you've been following this saga. as we speak, CyberLeak is still at large. Whoever he or they are, we don't know if this is a person, a group, but what odds do you give on CyberLeak evading the long arm of the law here, first of all? Because Rockstar has been subpoenaing Discord and whatever else. Like, it seems like people are Microsoft.

Yeah, they're hot on the trail. And people have been documenting, you know, like they found the crypto wallet, right? And it appears that CyberLeaks has gotten out of the game now, has cashed out, and pumped up this meme coin and didn't do the typical pump and dump meme coin crypto scam but was like profiting from the transactions on it that were advertised in the leaks

and evidently made off with about 250K which is, I mean, it's a nice haul, but is that going to be worth the eventual consequences here? We don't know that Rockstar Take 2 didn't also pay him to... So that's... Here's the thing that...

The conspiracy theory guy. Wait a second. Wait a second. This is it. Wait a second. Butchmash crossover. Hold on. Hold on. The thing that made the leak, not like other leaks that we've seen. He was GTA six weeks that we've seen, you know, four years ago. Yeah. In the game, he had his character right leak into a wall with bullets showing that they had a playable build of the game. So this wasn't just like I.

hacked a Discord and got gameplay clips, and now I'm putting a game play clips out. It's possible and certainly leak intimated that they had enough assets and an engine to like play the game outside of Rockstar infrastructure. So that's pretty huge. And did Rockstar pay him to not release that stuff, not put it out or get it back? I don't know. It seems like he went away They went away. Just asking questions. Pretty. I'm just asking.

I am just asking. Like, this seems to me. Noticing, noticing. Cyber ransom stuff happens all the time in a lot of different businesses. What happens in most of those situations is the companies pay and the person goes away just because, like, the whole thing is just way too complicated to get into. And so you, we must ask the question, like, was a ransom paid in order to make Mr. or Ms. week stopped doing this. So you're not suggesting that this was all orchestrated by Rockstar.

No, no, no, no, no. That they silenced cyber leak somehow without putting them behind bars, which could be coming. But no, it was really, I mean, it became kind of an appointment viewing. It was just every, every day, days at a time, for days on end, we're going to get a new two-minute clip here. And, you know, this, this conspiracy theory, of course, was circulating, oh, this is all some sort of work, you know, this is like a ARG or something like Rockstar is doing this to build up anticipation. Seemed quite far-fetched to me, but I understand the conspiracy because it only helped, really, ultimately, probably, right? I know that this is tough. I don't condone hacking into a developer studios and servers and releasing footage. And obviously, if you've orchestrated this

whole campaign and you have this big Netflix exclusive premiere and everything and then someone comes along is just leaking things and dribs and drabs and drabs. Like, that's going to be frustrating. And it's marred by this, you know, supposedly someone who's kind of campaigning for video game principles, but also is pumping up a meme coin at the same time. Give me a fucking, give me a fucking break. Really, standing up for physical media. And also my meme coin.

Right. Yeah. What? Two birds, one stone. But, but. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's tough for devs because they keep things close to the best for so long and how hard it is to keep the secrets and everything. And then when you show it off, you want to show it off to its best advantage and you don't want just things to come out and to kind of be at the mercy of someone you don't know what they have and how they got it and what could be coming next. Yeah.

And I thought it was really interesting the statement that Roxar put out on Wednesday after being radio silent for days of these leaks going on. And, you know, they said it has been heartbreaking for our team. It's kind of uncharacteristic for Rockstar to say anything. Usually they just let the game speak for itself. And, you know, they'll take their sweet time and we will wait and we will like it. And we will pay them whatever they ask. And 80 bucks and 100 bucks, sure, please give me more. And they actually apologized multiple times in this statement, which was interesting.

Because part of it, I think people were looking at CyberLeak almost as some sort of like Robin Hood figure. It's like, well, Rockstar, just took too long and you're so secretive and you're asking us to buy the game and you haven't actually showed it to us. And so here comes CyberLeak actually giving us a look at this game that you will not divulge. And they actually said, we are very sorry that everything has taken as long as it has from getting the game finished, nearly there, to sharing more details and official gameplay and providing the community with everything you want to know. So they didn't say like, yeah, we had this coming. Like CyberLeak was justified.

we dragged our feet. But I did think that was interesting, that they were like, we're sorry that this took so long and we made you look so long. And then they said, while it is unfortunate that the intended game experience may now be impacted by some spoilers, we hope that everyone will wait a bit longer to experience the games for themselves on November 19th. And Jomi said, you got it, Rockstar. I will wait as long as you want me to. I daren't sample the footage. But that was interesting too because like it sounded as if they didn't know what was coming yet. And that was another thing that I think got the public a little bit more on the side of CyberLeak is that there were no real spoilers here because the footage was all just like, you know, he's shooting

a basketball. They paid, they paid him. They paid him. The last, there was a little, there was a little flurry at the end where it was just like, rock stars about to show the official footage. I better just use whatever I have here where there were a couple of scenes. there was one prologue cutscene, which I did not watch because I have no interest in being spoiled. So if the game itself had leaked, if serious spoilers had leaked, then I think everyone would have turned against it because no one wants their experience to be spoiled after waiting this long, right? So the fact that we only got snippets of gameplay as opposed to, which made you wonder, like, well, does this person have access to the whole game? Is there a reason why they're sitting on some of this stuff? we only saw Jason footage, not Lucia footage, like do they have some kind of limited build or something?

Or are they just trying not to like bring down everyone on the internet against them by, you know, get the six star wanted level by like releasing story spoilers or something? So that was an interesting choice. But the effect that it had ultimately was just getting people even more psyched for the game. Ultimately, it's it's kind of immaterial because leaks or no leaks, extended look, no extended look, everyone's going to get the game. Like, it doesn't even matter how you market it or if you market it at all, really. They have us where they want us. And so as harded it may have been for them to have it come out this way, if anything,

it only increased interest because a lot of people were looking at the beach footage and the NPCs and the plane footage and being like, holy, like, this is what we wanted. And if anything, it just built anticipation leading into this trailer. So I don't think CyberLeak stole Rockstars Thunder in any kind of quantifiable, measurable way here. Like it didn't decrease my hype, if anything, it increased it finally getting a look at this thing. Yeah, I mean, we said this like in the years we were talking about this game where you have to get GTA6 right. There's no way you give a look or a launch and it's not perfect because then you can't even, you mentioned CyberFuck 2007. Ornette came out and it was buggy and it didn't work and it was an issue and people lost their minds.

Yeah. Right. And eventually they got it to a place where you play cyberpunk right now, spectacular. Yeah. Fantastic. But you have one opportunity to make a first impression. And for a game with this much hype, with this much excitement behind it, you got to nail it. So I don't fault Rockstar for playing things close to the chest.

and being like, we will slow roll what we show you. Because if it does not live up to your expectations, if it does not meet the certain level of quality, we're cooked. We are absolutely fried. And so I can understand. And that's why the apology to the people, I was like, oh my gosh, they really meanness.

They're really locked in. Because normally when something leaks, I remember, man, the insomnia leaks a couple years ago, I haven't heard from Insomniac for years. After those leaks, they were like, we're gone, don't talk to us, don't hit us, so we know nothing. Not until Wolverine started coming back out, they started showing back up again.

For the most part, these companies don't say anything about it. They're like, they might release like a little statement like, sorry that happened, we will be better next time, and then they go radio silent. But for Rockstar to come out and say something like that, that means that that's why I believe it's real, as much as I love entertaining Jason, Jason's theories.

For 250K, man, you got to be better than that, brother. That's going to be the mail you have to post when they finally catch you. You know what I mean? You better come up half a half a mill at least, brother. Come on.

Who knows he didn't? Maybe I'm saying it's possible he got that for not releasing other stuff. I'm just saying. But you know, Jomi, you're right. I think that it's become a strategy nowadays in gaming to really. least a game that's unfinished.

Starfield, 277, no man, no man sky. And just be like, we'll update it, we'll update it, we'll update it.

And the games, those are all really good to great games, actually, that have been updated two levels that are awesome. That, honestly,

me personally, left me feeling like, why the fuck did I pre-ordered this? Why did I order the deluxe edition? Why did I do this? And the game is not, just doesn't feel right. And it took me, I mean, it took me now, what are three, four years to get back to 2077,

be like, let me get, I hear it's good now. Let me give it a chance. And so I'm glad that Rockstar has that dedication to getting it right the first time and not the, this kind of strategic money grab that we have seen other games and other companies do. Well, we still have a lot of questions. I don't generally advise people to pre-order games because what do you get out of it? Other than maybe pre-downloading so that you don't have to wait the second it goes on sale. Yeah.

But beyond that, you can do that hours in advance. You don't have to do that months in advance. But with a game like this, you're probably going to be missing out. This is going to be the ultimate FOMO experience because everyone will be talking about GTA6. As will we here at ButtonMash. So there's still a lot. We don't know. You know, we got to look at this little minimal dialogue.

interface, which again goes with the sort of stripped down UI. It just looks like, you know, a button press to trigger dialogue. We don't know. Like, is Rockstar going to get into political territory here? Is Rockstar going to get into the culture wars? We don't know. We didn't see any indication of that either way here. But I think it's going to melt our minds.

If this was a base PS5, which seems to be the case, probably, then it's going to look really impressive in person. I think, you know, the map is supposedly triple the size. eyes of red dead twos, which was already enormous. So I mean, yeah, it's going to be maybe more of the same and maybe just iteration as opposed to revolution. But that alone, I think, is enough to wet our appetites here. So we will be bringing you much more on GTA6 in the weeks and months to come. And of course, we'll be covering the zillion games that are coming out before GTA6. because they want nothing to do with coming out in that same time,

including next week, Anamusha, Orbitals, the blood of Don Walker, Marvel's Wolverine, the week after that, the Resident Evil movie, new control game, new Silent Hill, galactic racer, gears of war, ace combat. It's going to be just a nuts, just sprint and boss rush of video games between now and November 19th.

And then it will be full cord press, all GTA all the time. And hopefully we will have an opportunity to talk about it again. So thanks so much, guys. I guess we should cop off so we can go watch this extended look several more times and then enjoy the reaction when it hits YouTube. Can't wait. As one character says to Lucia, this could be the start of something good.

I believe it will be for GTSX. And as Stephen Root says, you got to know when to get off, Jason. You hear me. I guess we got to get off this podcast right now. But everyone should check out, of course, Jomey and his fellow Midnight Boys. on the Ringerverse as well as the Wait a Second podcast, which recently featured one Jomi-a-Denron as a guest talking about Mark Walter and the Lakers. And Jason's many other podcasts outside the Ringerverse, including X-ray Vision,

including a brand new podcast, launching next week called Organizing Things a Good Movie Podcasts with our old pal, Shea Serrano. So check that out too. Jason, always a pleasure to listen to you. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for having me. You can contact us at Ringverse Gaming. Gmail.com, please share your impressions of this trailer.

But Match, we'll be back next week. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-meat products for always $375. And get Life Brand Pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready, with a whole world and more.