Two weeks out, Rockstar opened the doors. The Launch Gallery went live on the official GTA 6 site today, and it is just the game: 39 new screenshots of Jason, Lucia, Vice City, and the Leonida backcountry. No new trailer. No countdown games. The last page of the gallery says it plain: "See you in Leonida on November 19."
I went through every shot. Here is what Rockstar is actually showing us.
IT STARTS WITH A ROBBERY
The first screenshot in the gallery is Jason and Lucia hitting a Fleeca bank branch, bandanas up, duffel bags on, guns out. That is the whole game in one frame. These two are not sightseeing. Every calm shot in this gallery has a crime sitting right behind it.
From there it swings wide. A marina at golden hour, boats lined up, the Vice City skyline across the water. A nightclub packed wall to wall, disco balls, plants hanging off the ceiling, everybody's hands in the air. Lucia alone at a rain-flecked window with a handgun. The two of them on the hood of a pickup on a hill above the city, a deer grazing in the tall grass like nothing is about to happen.
Then the heat shows up. One wide shot has police surrounding a yacht with boats, cars, and a helicopter all in frame. Whatever Jason and Lucia take in this game, Leonida takes it personally.
“See you in Leonida on November 19.”
Moe Train
LEONIDA IS FLORIDA WITH THE VOLUME UP
I live in Southwest Florida, and half this gallery looks like my drive home with the saturation turned up. The closer is an alligator's eye glowing red over swamp water while an airboat pushes through the mist behind it. There is a twilight drawbridge shot, traffic stacked on both sides, a speedboat skimming underneath. A lowrider with underglow at a neon gas station at dusk. A hotel pool shot from straight above, flamingos cutting across the frame.
Rockstar did not build a cartoon Florida. They built the real one's greatest hits and turned every one of them louder.
THE THREE SHOTS THAT MATTER
One: the Fleeca robbery. First image in the gallery, and it is a mission statement. Jason and Lucia are a two-person crime wave and Rockstar wants that understood before anything pretty happens.
Two: the yacht raid. That wide shot is the scale of this game. The water, the skyline, the helicopter, the money, the cops. If the missions play at that size, we are in for something stupid in the best way.
Three: the alligator eye. One red eye over black water, an airboat coming out of the fog. That is the most Florida image Rockstar has ever made, and it is not even in Vice City. The map beyond the city is where this game is going to surprise people.
DAY ONE
I have waited thirteen years for this game, and I have done it without watching a second of leaked footage. I wrote that piece last month and I stand on it: [I am going in clean](/news/gta-6-leaks-going-in-clean/). The Launch Gallery is how this game is supposed to meet the world, finished, framed, and on Rockstar's schedule.
November 19, I am in Leonida. The full gallery is live now on [Rockstar's official GTA VI site](https://www.rockstargames.com/VI/launch-gallery), and both trailers live on our [trailers page](/trailers/) if you want the moving version.
Source: Rockstar Games: Grand Theft Auto VI, The Launch Gallery
