Back in 2014, there were images swimming in my head. The vision of a tan dune against a perfect blue sky broken by the appearance of a stormtrooper without his helmet on, sweating bullets in the desert sun. A dark figure stomping into a wintry forest and igniting the blade of a red lightsaber, which was soon joined by two smaller laser beams, forming a futuristic cross guard. A fleet of X-wings zooming across the surface of a placid lake. The Millennium Falcon appearing as John Williams' iconic score soared, propelling the old ship through a visceral loop-de-loop.
UntilStar Wars: The Force Awakenshit theaters a year later, those shots from its first teaser trailer indelibly defined the movie in my mind. I loved the movie then, and despite the pop cultural backlash against the sequel trilogy, still love it now. But, that minute-and-a-half long teaser is as much a part of my memory of the experience as the finished film.
A trailer hasn’t captured my imagination in the same way since. I couldn’t wait to playCyberpunk 2077orThe Last of Us Part 2, but my excitement for those games was built by larger gameplay showcases, written previews from critics, and podcast discussions from people who had gone hands-on with the games. Jordan Peele’sUs trailer, with its eerie remix of Luniz' “I Got 5 On It” is probably the thing, since 2014, that has come the closest.
ButGrand Theft Auto 6is fully in The Force Awakens territory for me. I liked the teaser the first time I watched it, but felt a twinge of disappointment at the 2025 release date. I thought, “That’s it?” when it was over. But, partially due to my job here at TheGamer and partially because it’s short enough that I can impulsively rewatch it, I’ve now gone back to it a half dozen times. It reminds me of Elton John’s “Daniel” or Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” earworm songs that burrow into your brain and refuse to leave. Something about the GTA 6 trailer iscatchy.
Like The Force Awakens trailer announcing the triumphant return of the biggest movie series ever after a decade away, Grand Theft Auto 6 represents the return of (arguably) the biggest gaming series ever after a similarly long time out of the spotlight. And, unlike Star Wars, which was returning after the poorly received prequels, GTA is following the critical and commercial success of Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the best-selling games of all time that routinely makes lists of the greatest games ever made. In some ways, the return of GTA is a bigger deal than the return of Star Wars. In fact, if you go solely by theview countson theofficial trailers, GTA 6’s teaser is five times as big a deal.
That cultural importance lends Grand Theft Auto 6’s trailer some of its stickiness. I want to watch it in the same way you want to track a hurricane; when it hits it will have massive consequences for culture and for me, specifically, as someone who writes about games.
But, the teaser is also imminently rewatchable because every shot hints at the world outside the shot. This was the case with The Force Awakens, too. Who’s the dark figure? Why does his lightsaber look like that? Who is the narrator? Who is piloting the Millennium Falcon? Why are the stormtroopers back after the Empire fell in Return of the Jedi? Who is the stormtrooper? Who is the girl on the speeder? Its images were evocative because of all the context that viewers brought to them, and all the information they still lacked.
Grand Theft Auto 6’s teaser similarly is freighted with all that viewers know about the series, the consoles the game will release on, and the broader state of the industry. Will the game’s world really be as crowded and alive as it appears in the teaser? Can the PS5 and Xbox Series X actually handle that? Will other developers attempt to outdo Rockstar or, like GTA 5 andRed Dead Redemption 2before it, will GTA 6 be a generational outlier?
There are the questions about gameplay and story, too, and the whole Internet is pinning red strings to the corkboard. Is the trailer presentingLucia’s story in reverse, as somehave theorized? Will her ankle monitor serve a gameplay purpose,limiting the size of the early game map?Is the woman in the bikini Lucia or someone else? Will the social media videos, omnipresent in the trailer, be integrated into the game’s mechanics? Just how much of Florida will we get to explore?
The trailer raises all of those questions but, crucially, doesn’t answer any of them. That’s what makes it (and The Force Awakens' teaser) so effective. We fill in what we don’t know with what we can imagine.
