Concocting the perfect video game trailer is an art. You need to tell a story, introduce some stakes, and ideally get people excited about grabbing the controller within a few brief minutes. And one prolific game trailer editor reckons GTA 6‘s second trailer could’ve been a little better.
Editor Derek Lieu, who’s helped make a ton of game trailers, including ones for Half-Life Alyx and Psychonauts 2, tells Aftermath that the upcoming game looks “amazing,” but its trailer doesn’t convey much about what this story is actually about, apart from the fact that we play as a couple of crime-doers.
“A trailer is designed to do this thing well, which is to incite our emotions and show a bunch of stuff from this new thing that we haven’t seen before,” Lieu says. “This trailer, or a bunch of B-roll with music over it, can kind of achieve the same thing. But that doesn’t make it a good trailer. Just because people get hyped, doesn’t mean it’s a good trailer.”
Continuing, Lieu adds that “the only thing we know about these characters is: They do crime and they’re a couple,” before questioning what their motivation is. “Why are they doing crime? Are they being forced to do crime? What’s the reason?” Beyond just getting rich, that is.
Rockstar Games’ website gave us more info about Jason and Lucia, our ambitious protag duo, who apparently get caught up in a job gone wrong, but much of it isn’t in the trailer.
The second trailer primarily had one job, though: to soften the blow of GTA 6’s delay to next year. And it did that. The internet was immediately set ablaze at the almost unbelievable tech on display, while more niche fan bases got to work trying to accurately create its map a full year before launch.
And to play devil’s advocate, I’d agree with Lieu in the sense that, yeah, the second trailer doesn’t really tell us anything important that we didn’t know from its first look. But think about the little slice of life moments we get throughout the trailer – Jason going about his daily chores and getting ogled by women, a random NPC canoeing, Lucia coming home from community service, throwing her keys onto the table and then collapsing into Jason’s arms. How rare is it that a AAA game this expensive shows genuine signs of life?
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