GTA 6's Plot Twist is Hiding in Plain Sight

Hi, my name is Mic and I'm addicted to GTA.

Okay not addicted but I did time my lunch break at work carefully just so I could watch Netflix's GTA 6 Extended Look at the exact moment it dropped 👀

I watched it both as a video game lover and story analyst, and the video satisfied and intrigued both those sides of me. There's a lot we can infer from this Extended Look, and a lot of questions we may now be asking based on this new information.

Let's get into it!

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What Does GTA 6's Extended Look Show Us?

There are two explanations for EVERYTHING we see in this 26-minute extended look:

• 1. Showing what we can / will do (a gameplay feature)

• 2. Showing the story

Some do both if you look close enough, but we'll get to that hehe

If you're watching the Extended Look purely for the story, you'd probably notice quite a few things we see don't actually move the scene forward. Some even make the scene slower!

This is an indication that something is being shown to us purely for gameplay purposes.

For example, Jason petting the dog in the first scene.

Was it necessary to the story? No.

Necessary to the gameplay? YES!!!!! I've been wanting to pet the animals in GTA forever and now I can finally do it?!?! I genuinely got so excited when I saw this, and I'm sure many other people watching did too. And that's exactly why Rockstar made damn sure to show off this feature 😅

Another pure gameplay example is Jason grabbing a drink from the fridge, and later eating a bag of chips. Showing this beat in the Extended Look gives us nothing plot-wise (it actually slows the scene down!), but it's not being emphasized like this for no reason.

This emphasis heavily implies that eating and drinking is correlated with character health, and likely an important part of managing the characters.

We see other hints at gameplay features such as more complex carjacking, the ability to say extra (optional) things to NPCs, the 6-star wanted system, ta "visibility to the enemy" scale, and of course the various different methods surveillance and recording such as social media and security cameras, and the new ability to switch into disguise.

The last three are particularly interesting, as they imply players will need to be extra careful when committing crimes to make sure they aren't seen long enough for NPCs to identify them.

This new feature almost certainly will be a major aspect of the actual story as well, given how much emphasis has been placed on it in not only the Extended Look but the other two trailers we've seen.

But the most interesting features I noticed are things I believe Rockstar is implying will be CRUCIAL to both the story and the gameplay: moods and relationship status.

When Jason pets the dog, a happy emoji pops up, indicating his mood has improved. This implies that certain actions can affect the characters' moods positively, and likely negatively as well (I mean, its GTA after all).

So Rockstar isn't just showing us what Jason and Lucia can do, it's showing us that what they feel matters too.

Later in the Extended Look, there's a moment where we switch from Lucia to Jason, and we can see a heart connecting their photos to each other. This strongly implies relationship status.

Now we know moods and relationship status are being tracked in-game... The question is: Why?

Why would Rockstar build an entire system around the characters' moods if their emotional states weren't going to matter to the story?

And the heart... We already know Jason and Lucia are in a relationship. Why would a heart be needed to indicate that?

Well, the obvious answer is: if there's potential for them to break up.

And a recent interview with Rockstar's head of development actually confirms this theory.

He stated that Jason and Lucia have their own relationship system, separate from the game's criminal progression, and that spending time together can strengthen their relationship.

He also clarifies that Jason and Lucia start the game "wanting to give [their relationship] a shot," but that simply playing through the story missions together may not be enough to "keep them together."

So we know the relationship can change, and the characters' moods can change.

These aren't just cute little gameplay systems Rockstar decided to throw into GTA 6 for funsies.

These are key elements of the game that tell us what the story is going to be about.

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What Does GTA 6's Extended Look Tell Us?

"Relationships are about communication, Jay." Lucia says to Jason within the first 10 minutes of the Extended Look.

Later followed by: "What reason do we have to trust this guy?" Lucia says about someone they're meeting for a job.

These may seem like throwaway lines, but we have to remember everything Rockstar is showing us has a purpose.

Why choose the scenes with these lines about communication and trust specifically?

This emphasis on trust and communication isn't only in the Extended look, but in everything we've seen for GTA 6 so far.

In the very first trailer, Lucia says: "The only way we're gonna get through this is by sticking together. Being a team. Trust?"

To which Jason responds: "... Trust."

In the second trailer, Jason says: "You and me, Lu. We got this."

This coupled with Rockstar's official description that says that Jason and Lucia are "forced to rely on each other more than ever," it's pretty clear that one of them is gonna fuck this relationship up.

As a story analyst, I know that if the material repeatedly emphasizes trust and communication, the overarching themes which will be expressed via the plot.

In other words, if trust is part of the theme, the plot will revolve around it, it's a way of stating the themes. If trust is central to the theme, the protagonist will either break someone's trust or have their trust in someone else broken.

So how will this happen, and why does it matter so much?

Well we have to think about who these two characters are.

Not only are they criminals, they're in a relationship.

How can trust be broken between a couple? There are plenty of ways (trust me! 😉), but the point is: the choice to make Lucia and Jason a couple rather than just two dudes hanging out and committing crimes together was intentional.

If two criminals betray each other, it's a plot point. But if someone betrays their partner, it's an emotional arc.

It changes the central question of the story from: "Can Lucia and Jason survive the criminal world?" to potentially "Can Lucia and Jason survive each other?"

Now let's look at the criminal side of it. What would be the worst (aka most narratively effective) way a criminal could break their partner's trust? By ratting them out to the cops.

In what we've seen from Rockstar so far, a major aspect of the story is that Lucia was imprisoned.

Jason is the one who picks her up from prison, so they clearly knew each other and presumably committed crimes together before (or at least Jason is a familiar face to the cops for some reason, as evidenced in the second trailer when the prison guard asks: "I seen you here before?" and Jason responds: "You might've").

So the big question is... How did Lucia end up in prison but Jason didn't?

From a storytelling perspective, you don't spend time establishing that something happened just to say, "yep, that happened."

You do it to set up something that will become important later.

And the most interesting payoff isn't "Lucia went to prison because she got caught." We already know she got caught. The interesting payoff is the answer to the question: who made that possible?

This points us to what could potentially be GTA 6's biggest plot twist: Jason betrays Lucia.

Maybe he reported one of Lucia's crimes to the cops. Maybe he made a deal with the cops so he wouldn't be arrested for a crime they both committed. Maybe he's an undercover cop himself!

We don't know for sure, but I think what we do know for sure gives us good enough reason to suspect that Jason had something to do with Lucia going to prison -- and Lucia doesn't know about it (yet).

Because if she knew from the beginning that Jason was responsible for her imprisonment, why would she be willingly rebuilding this relationship with him?

So she must find out later in the story, which causes that broken trust we've been talking about.

Unless Lucia does already know but has her own reasons for staying close to him anyway (maybe she's an undercover cop, or working with the cops to take Jason down!), which is entirely possible.

The reason I'm so convinced of this exact betrayal (Jason working against Lucia) though is that there's an emphasis on a particular police officer in both the second trailer and Extended Look.

That cop is Mendez.

During the opening sequence of the Extended Look, Mendez busts the meth lab Jason and Lucia are in. Both Lucia and Jadon recognize Mendez (Jason: "Fuck, it's him." Lucia: "It's fucking Mendez." Jason: "You think he saw us?").

So they both know him, and they both know that they both know him.

There are many reasons this could be, but the most clear-cut reason is that Mendez is the main cop who's hunting them down, and thus has interacted with both of them before.

But if we look back at the second trailer, you'll notice there's a clip of Mendez saying "Us cops, we gotta protect each other."

Let's stop right there.

In a game where the protagonists are a criminal couple, why would a scene exist in which a cop says this to someone?

And why would the cops protecting each other matter to the story so much that Rockstar chose to put this in the game's trailer?

Generally, we don't see scenes of characters talking to each other when one of our lead characters isn't around either in that moment or shortly before / after.

Basically we as the player can't know something that at least one of our main characters doesn't directly know or observe.

So that begs the question: who is Mendez talking to?

Well, the shot he says this in appears to have two other men standing in front of him.

This may lead you to conclude that Jason is an informant or undercover cop, since a man is visible in the scene and we know that a protagonist must be present in each scene in some way.

But this doesn't guarantee Jason is involved... Maybe it's Lucia, who could be off-screen in this shot!

Or it could be neither of them -- maybe they both come busting through the door to take all the cops out right after this beat. We don't know!

But what we do know is that the central question of the story is heavily implied to be: Can Jason and Lucia trust each other?

So I believe it's more likely than not that one of them is an undercover cop, or working with the cops in some way.

Especially because the other option -- that Jason simply ratted her out / was working with the cops to protect himself -- was literally just done in GTA 5 with Michael and Trevor. Repeating this exact plot would make very little sense, and would ultimately be predictable unless there's some other twist to it.

Compounding this is the fact that the Extended Look and second trailer both mention undercover cops at least once (Lucia to Jason in the Extended Look: "This dude could be a cop, for all we know." NPC talking about Jason in the second trailer: "Yo, D, this fool a fed?")...

It seems a lot more like foreshadowing than just my crazy fan theory hehe 🤭

But we'll find out in November!