GTA VI’s bombastic trailer could have solely been a minute and a half lengthy, however for that temporary time period I felt like I used to be in Florida, sweating in a sun-soaked swamp, interacting with its daft denizens, slapping mosquitos off my ankles with a paper fan. GTA VI is ready within the fictional state of Leonida (Florida) and the acquainted, neon-soaked Vice Metropolis (Miami), but it surely clearly covers the Keys, the Everglades, and all these unusual suburbs dotting the peninsula which are teeming with Florida males. We see filth bikers racing via streets, a fan boat whizzing via a swamp at sundown, weeds rising via the cracks of busted-up concrete sidewalks, and so many extra markers of a state that’s virtually perpetually within the public eye.
I could also be a born-and-bred New Yorker, however I take into account myself one thing of a Florida professional. From the ripe previous age of 1 up till my 18th birthday, I spent greater than every week each February at my grandparents’ condominium in Fort Lauderdale. I’d fish geckos out of the pool with the leaf skimmer, stroll alongside the man-made lakes within the hopes I’d spot a gator, and drive my mother and father to take me to Miami so I may get a henna tattoo and beaded braids (I’m sorry).
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I’ve vacationed in Miami twice because the covid pandemic (and each instances I spent more cash than I’d wish to admit in strip golf equipment). Apart from New York, there isn’t one other state I’ve spent extra time in than Florida, so I’m well-equipped to investigate the world wherein GTA VI is ready.
When the extremely anticipated Rockstar sequel drops someday in 2025 for Xbox Collection X/S and PS5 (not PC, oops), we’ll get to play in a large Floridian funhouse mirror, a real-but-unreal world filled with gators, weapons, and women.
Leonida, the good GTA 6 state
Florida is a state of extremes. Excessive poverty may be present in its extra central, swampy suburbs, and excessive wealth glistens on the Miami shoreline. We see all of it throughout the GTA VI trailer, from the graceful, panning pictures of the artwork deco buildings in South Seashore and the turquoise waters surrounding the Florida Keys, to the shaky, iPhone-quality movies of a unadorned man working from cops or a man crashing via a Solo Cup-covered folding desk.
GTA VI’s Vice Metropolis arms us Miami within the bustling, bumping, twerking golf equipment just like the one rappers Future and Meek Mill dropped 10 bands at in single night time, and the mural-covered, artsy Wynwood hotspots you could find over the bridge, with lowriders and sport bikes parked exterior. We get the sweeping overhead pictures of town’s snaking highways, the barges parked in its impossibly clear waters, the crowded seashores full of individuals in neon thong bikinis and little chihuahuas working throughout the sand, a 4WD cop truck parked jauntily close to the place the waves are available.
However the trailer additionally pulls away from Vice Metropolis, and subsequently Miami, offering peeks of the locations just like the Florida Everglades (the 1.5 million acre wetland sitting on the state’s southern tip) and the Seven Mile Bridge, which connects mainland Florida to the Keys, a set of islands off the southernmost tip. We additionally see the impoverished suburbs, with visuals that really feel as in the event that they’re invoking locations like Pahokee, one of many poorest suburbs within the Miami metropolitan space with a 35% poverty fee as of 2022.
Florida males in GTA 6
Rockstar’s unbelievable trailer additionally provides us a have a look at its core solid, together with one in all our two essential characters, Lucia, who’s getting out of jail after a string of what she calls “unhealthy luck.” Lucia, like 12.7% of Floridians as of the 2022 census, probably lives under the poverty line, and this Bonnie in all probability turned to crime along with her Clyde-esque lover to make a fast buck. And he or she, like 27.1% of Floridians, seems to be of Hispanic or Latino descent.
Florida could also be constantly related to wild white guys and its politics could also be extra aligned with far-right losers like Ron DeSantis, but it surely additionally has the best inhabitants of Cuban-People within the nation. There’s a vibrant variety tucked away in numerous components of the Sunshine State, and the trailer makes positive to indicate us all of that. We see it on the Vice Metropolis seashores and in its golf equipment, positive, however we additionally see it within the sun-soaked suburbs and off the rain-glistened freeway, within the crew of filth bikers and ATV riders popping wheelies down a dusty facet avenue, in a set of automotive aficionados parked on the curb, doorways open to indicate off their interiors.
However a Florida recreation wouldn’t be a Florida recreation with out Florida males, and it’s clear that GTA VI is stuffed with them. In the true world, there’s one thing within the water down there, one thing that’s spawned so many information headlines like “Florida Man Does [Insert Something Wild Here]” that it was a meme that then turned a kind of cultural shorthand. Florida Man is in every single place in Florida, and he’s in every single place on this trailer—dancing on the bow of a yacht, his overly tanned pores and skin like a Slim Jim, working ass-naked from a cop via a fuel station parking zone, making an attempt to fish a gator out of an in-ground pool, staring blithely at a unique gator strutting via the entrance door of a comfort retailer, standing for a mugshot, face adorned with unhealthy tattoos, coated in mud and American flag regalia wielding a beer, grabbing his crotch on the facet of the freeway, watering his garden in only a inexperienced poker visor, thong, socks, and sneakers.
We even get a Florida lady, for variety’s sake: an older girl, sporting a nightgown and slippers, dual-wielding hammers on the finish of her driveway, wherein a beat-up previous muscle automotive is parked. “Nicely, look who’s again,” she says menacingly, reminding me of the time a lady in a Florida relaxation cease tried to inform me she was my mother and I needed to go along with her to satisfy Santa.
As Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen mentioned, Rockstar has at all times been good at making unbelievable trailers that seize the quintessential vibes of the locations from which it attracts inspiration. However there’s one thing actually particular about this GTA VI trailer—it’s imbued with that unusual, surreal Floridian feeling, that chaos that thrives in its humidity, that nestles amongst its weird animals and much more weird folks. I’m able to go down south, however I hope that Rockstar’s usually pitch-perfect model of satire additionally reveals some sharp truths in regards to the Sunshine State.
