Grand Theft Auto 6’s Netflix special convinced me that Jason and Lucia will be the best GTA protagonists

Netflix’s Grand Theft Auto 6: An Extended Look is the world’s first official taste of GTA 6 gameplay, and it looks stunning, but what you might overlook are the smaller details.

The Extended Look highlighted a few things that we could’ve gleaned from earlier trailers. The world is absurdly detailed, for one. A simple tiled floor wouldn’t be uniform in real life, so here tiles will be individually chipped, cracked, stained, and sometimes gashes will carve through multiple sections of the floor. A fridge will be covered in magnets and pictures,

The way NPCs gesticulate during dialogue brings their personalities to life; corners of rooms will have scatterings of trash, and even a later venue we see for a party has cardboard taped to the floor to prevent workmen with dirty shoes from ruining the marble. Every table, desk, street corner, and even wall has something to look at, some detail that makes a world feel lived in and alive.

It’s a genuinely shocking level of detail and one of the most impressive we’ve ever seen in a video game, let alone one running on a console. Rockstar Games have always pushed the boundaries of fidelity in all of its releases, but Red Dead Redemption 2 especially thrived on having a strong narrative and emotional core, one which humanized and grounded its eclectic cast of characters. From this Extended Look, I think GTA 6 will do the same thing.

It’s easy to miss for all of the guns, cars, drugs, and details, but Jason and Lucia are the protagonists, and their relationship might be the main character.

There’s seldom a single shot in the Extended Look that doesn’t somehow involve both Jason and Lucia. They come to pick up merchandise together, they negotiate together, shoot together, and when Lucia kicks out a window to escape, Jason is there to lower her down slowly.

That party venue inevitably gets raided, and even as Jason and Lucia split up to take on different tasks, Jason uses an enemy radio and the elevator as a distraction so Lucia can disappear.

Back at their shared apartment, Lucia asks Jason for his opinion on what she should wear, and she doesn’t like any of his answers. As the player, you can interact with Lucia through the door, though the only option is to tell her to “Hurry.”

Wisely, whoever recorded this gameplay demonstration knew it would be better to leave her alone than to rush a lady getting dressed. As Jason walks through the home, it’s clearly designed with a feminine touch, hinting that Jason might let Lucia take the lead when it comes to interior design. Again, wise.

When Lucia is ready, the pair arrive at a rooftop bar, and as they emerge from the elevator, the player is given the option to hold a button to have the pair hold hands. The Extended Look rarely shows us the UI to make the footage feel more cinematic, but these key prompts have been left in.

It highlights that Jason and Lucia’s dynamic is more than just a unique hook for the sixth game in the series, but is closer to the same emotional core that made Red Dead Redemption 2’s story and characters a fan favorite.

“It might not feel like it, but these are your glory days. The salad years, y’know? Nothing is gonna beat who you are now. You can’t see all the f***ed up s*** that’s looming on the horizon. Enjoy this, dude. If this right now was all that there is, all the time… It would be perfect. Trust me.”

This character monologue directed at Jason closes out the Extended Look, and I think it highlights what the themes of GTA 6 might actually be. While GTA 5 had three characters coming at life from different perspectives, RDR2’s troubled Arthur Morgan provided a single point of view that allowed players to feel closer to the protagonist and the main cast of characters. I think GTA 6 is about Jason and Lucia, a whirlwind romance, the highs and lows of a criminal lifestyle, and a moment in time that can’t last forever.

Yes, the guns, cars, cosmetics, missions, and world are all beautiful and incredibly impressive, but I’m most eager to see Rockstar Games push the boundaries of its storytelling.

This is a studio that has improved at writing and telling stories at the same rate that it has pushed technical and visual limitations. I fear GTA 6’s Bonnie and Clyde might end the same way as their real-life inspirations, but I can’t wait to see how Rockstar pulls it off.