Grand Theft Auto VI's protagonists, Jason and Lucia, have many of the qualities of a functional couple. They live together, get ready for parties together, hold hands in public, and help each other escape heavily armed police.
Their relationship sits front and center in Netflix's Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, the 26-minute presentation Rockstar Games released Aug. 27. Captured entirely from in-game footage on PlayStation 5, it offers the clearest account yet of the game’s storyline and how its two protagonists operate as partners in crime and life.
Rockstar has previously said that Jason and Lucia become trapped in a criminal conspiracy stretching across Leonida after an easy score goes wrong. The new footage begins to show what that may look like. A botched pickup leads to a deadly police raid, which appears to push the couple toward more experienced criminals, riskier jobs, and a lavish party that ends in another full-scale attack.
The presentation does not reveal the complete plot or necessarily show every scene in chronological order. It does, however, give us enough to begin connecting Jason and Lucia’s path through the game. Here is everything that happened in their story, followed by the new gameplay details and a comparison of the official footage with the recent leaks.
Spoilers for Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look follow.
What happens in the GTA VI Extended Look?
The trouble begins with what should be a routine pickup. Jason and Lucia enter a rundown apartment building while working for Vice City businessman Boobie Ike, searching for a man named Raymond. Right from the start, Rockstar slips in possible clues about the game's larger systems; for example, Jason stops to pet a dog, prompting an angel icon to appear on screen as if he has earned a sort of morality credit.
The couple moves deeper into the building, and they discover people cooking and packaging drugs while Raymond’s associates explain that his partner has gone off the grid. Until they find out what happened, the entire operation is supposed to remain in a holding pattern. But before Jason and Lucia can leave, someone named Ernesto calls with a warning: a task force is on its way. The people inside begin frantically packing up drugs and trying to escape, while the arriving officers appear to have little interest in making arrests.
Instead, police storm the building and begin shooting, giving us the first extended look at GTA VI’s faster, more physical combat. Jason and Lucia fight through cramped rooms with pistols and shotguns before escaping in an elevator. There, Lucia asks whether one of the officers was Menendez, suggesting the couple may already have a history with the task force.
The Grand Theft Auto VI title card then appears. This disastrous pickup is clearly more than just an isolated mission.
Jason and Lucia's bad day begins
From there, we get to Jason and Lucia at their shared home, getting ready for a party. Fake commercials air on television, including an ad for the anxiety medication "Angstipan," a dissociative drug often advertised on billboards in Leonida, and another for a sandwich that contains what appears to be an entire deli counter.
Jason and Lucia later arrive at the party hand in hand, where they meet Brian Heder. Brian is a longtime drug runner who lets Jason live at one of his properties in exchange for helping with local shakedowns, according to Rockstar’s character description. Their conversation makes clear that the couple is in serious trouble and needs Brian to arrange an introduction to someone who may be able to help.
Interspersed throughout the Netflix special are montages highlighting the people, places, and activities that fill GTA VI’s world. They also provide important context about Jason and Lucia’s relationship and their history together.
In the first supercut, the couple robs a diner, holds up a liquor store, steals cars, and fights through several other jobs. The diner sequence appears to be the finished version of the robbery that leaked in unfinished form in 2022.
The Extended Look moves to Jason and Lucia driving to meet a new contact. Lucia feels nervous before they arrive, and she has good reason: the mystery man appears to be Raul Bautista, a seasoned bank robber. Jason is handed a rifle, Lucia gets behind the wheel, and the couple is immediately thrown into another police chase.
This one quickly becomes much larger than the apartment raid. As Lucia speeds through the sunny streets of Vice City, Jason shoots at police vehicles and helicopters from the passenger seat.
By the time the trio escapes, it becomes clear that the mission was also a test. When Lucia asks whether they passed, their contact tells them that they stayed alive and hands over their payment. Jason and Lucia then wonder whether they are officially part of his crew.
A security job goes spectacularly wrong
The answer appears to be yes, and their apparent promotion immediately raises the stakes. The next time we see Jason and Lucia working, they have traded small robberies and casual clothes for formal wear and a private security job protecting a wealthy young man named Andrés de León.
The assignment takes them from Andrés’ private jet to a party celebrating the opening of MegaMundo’s first corporate headquarters on American soil. Inside, Andrés and his associates are doing drugs in a conference room while the company’s chief operating officer, Petra, tries to pull Jason into the larger celebration downstairs.
Naturally, the night ends in yet another shootout. Armed men wearing medical masks (similar to the ones Raymond's crew wore) and white jumpsuits storm the building, separating Jason and Lucia on different floors. The mission then cuts between their simultaneous fights: Jason shoots his way through the attackers while protecting Andrés and briefly slows time to land several precise headshots, suggesting a character-specific ability similar to those used by Michael, Franklin, and Trevor in GTA V.
Lucia, meanwhile, has been separated from her guns and must rely on the hand-to-hand fighting skills Jason mentioned earlier. After being knocked down in a stairwell and strangled by one attacker, she manages to fight him off and take his weapon.
By that point, the larger story is beginning to take shape. Jason and Lucia start out as a couple, committing minor robberies, but a failed pickup sends them looking for help. That search connects them with more experienced criminals, and those relationships pull them into increasingly elaborate and dangerous jobs.
What else can you do in GTA VI?
About the halfway point, Rockstar uses Extended Look to show just how much players can do around Vice City and the wider state of Leonida. Among other things, Jason and Lucia can ride scooters, swim, scuba dive, drive airboats through swamps, work out, go skydiving, race cars, ride motocross bikes, visit strip clubs, practice at shooting ranges, rob stores, and escape police on motorcycles and jet skis.
Unlike the long aerial transitions used to move among the three protagonists in GTA V, the switch appears to take only a few seconds. That suggests players will be able to move between Jason and Lucia almost instantly when the two are near each other.
It is certainly impressive that all of this footage was captured on a standard PlayStation 5. The nighttime lighting, water reflections, crowded interiors, instant character switching, and dense street scenes were not recorded on an upgraded PS5 Pro or high-end PC.
How does the official footage compare with the leaks?
The Extended Look arrives after a person or group calling itself Cyberleek spent more than a week releasing footage from an apparently playable version of GTA VI.
Those leaks appeared to show Jason playing basketball, refueling cars, using a Taser, flying a plane, driving hypercars, stealing vehicles, and attempting to escape police. Other clips fueled speculation about vehicle storage, expanded inventories, a six-star wanted level, police recognizing a suspect’s clothing, and the possible morality system hinted at when Jason pets the dog.
Rockstar acknowledged that unauthorized gameplay had circulated Aug. 26, calling the experience "heartbreaking for our team." The studio apologized for the long wait, said development was "nearly there" and asked players to wait until Nov. 19 to experience the complete game.
Meanwhile, Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has sought information from Microsoft and Discord as it attempts to identify the people behind the leaks. Cyberleek's repeated attempts to use the footage to promote a cryptocurrency have also made theories that the leaks are a secret Rockstar marketing stunt increasingly difficult to believe.
Even with so much footage already circulating, the official presentation supplied something the leaks could not: context. The leaks showed individual mechanics and disconnected moments. The Extended Look showed the relationship holding all of those moments together.
Grand Theft Auto VI will be released Nov. 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The Extended Look is available on Netflix and will also be released through Rockstar’s YouTube channel and the official GTA VI website.
There will be plenty of cars to steal, places to rob, and ways to attract police attention. But the real question at the center of GTA VI is what happens to Jason and Lucia as they do all of it together.
from Mashable https://ift.tt/WKJwaAe
