GTA 6's second trailer flexes Rockstar's unparalleled ambition and sells players on two games in one

With the cry of gulls, GTA 6 returns to us. We’re back in Rockstar’s spin on Florida and we’re here for, what exactly? A story trailer? Well, it’s complicated.

And those birds are a decent way into the complications, as it happens. I write to inform you that there are birds in three of the first four shots of the new trailer. There’s a gaggle of gulls flying over the establishing shot, then birds – geese? – flying in V formation when we’re on the ground. Then in shot four, with the hero on the roof, those gulls are back, less orderly than the geese, and acting very much like the wayward pedestrians of the sky.

What’s with all the birds? Probably nothing! It’s unlikely to be a quiet suggestion that GTA’s finally going full ornithologist, I’m sad to say. I mean, I’d love that. But I think if there is a point to details this small and inconsequential, it’s something very simple, but also very Rockstar. Hey, this game has birds in it, but also .

This is the world Rockstar moves in these days, a world in which every part of a trailer is picked over and deconstructed. A world where every element is sounded out for range and extravagance and design excess. There’s plenty of room for that in the new trailer, but because of all this, there’s also something fascinating about the trailer as a whole. Something that I think speaks to the kind of game GTA now is. If this is a GTA 6 story trailer – and other smarter people have pointed out it’s not brilliant at setting up its story – it can no longer be that. It has to cater to the audiences for both sides of Rockstar’s game. It needs to offer stuff for the story people, but also the people who are here for the sandbox.