An unlucky former Rockstar animator has made themselves the new temporary focus of Grand Theft Auto fans, after posting a demo reel of their work on various company titles to Vimeo. The two-minute reel includes finished scenes from the likes of GTA5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, alongside various one-off animations with Pixar-style cartoon characters, but it’s the opening 20 seconds that’s attracting all the attention.
The three animations are flat-textured and set to Tom Petty’s Love is a Long Road, the song featured in GTA 6’s first trailer. The first shows a male character removing what seems to be the GTA 6 version of a Lime Bike from the rental rack, and then returning the bike to the same spot. Eagle-eyed fans had previously identified bike racks for some sort of rental company (which may well be called “Lombike”), so clearly this is another aspect of modern urban life that has found its way into the game.
The other two animations show a character, which does resemble protagonist Lucia, clambering down from a truck bed first of all, before the second animation shows her hopping down from the truck roof to the truck bed, and then out to the ground. There are also a few buildings in the background. I’m not sure what can be gleaned from that, other than that roof riding may well be more fleshed-out in this entry (I do have a dim memory of a mission in GTA 4 or 5 where I was hanging on to a roof).
Anyway: thoughts and prayers to the animator concerned, who’s worked for Rockstar for over two decades on its biggest hits, and will hopefully not be given too much of a going-over by Take Two’s friendly neighborhood lawyers. The footage was initially spotted and circulated via a Reddit thread, shortly after which the original was deleted (including a description confirming that the early footage is from GTA 6), though it’s still easily findable.
It also should be said that this is work-in-progress portfolio stuff, and a long way from the kind of super-polished footage that Rockstar officially releases. Yes there’s probably a few things to be gleaned about GTA 6 from it, but this all looks like very early footage, possibly even earlier than what we saw in the great GTA 6 leak of 2022.
As far as the official word, GTA 6 has so far had two blowout trailers, and two major delays. They’re two of the best you’ll ever see, to be fair: Here’s 2023’s trailer one, and here’s the second we got to numb the pain of another delay. Right now the game is scheduled to release in November 2026: “These extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve” says Rockstar. At this stage I’ll just settle for it being finished, because by the time GTA 7 rolls around I’m going to be in the nursing home.
