In 2025, one game will be on almost every video game enthusiast’s shopping list — Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto VI. The first trailer is out and it’s simply f-a-n-t-a-s-t-i-c. The trailer leaked — on X (formerly Twitter) — hours before the official release was scheduled, forcing the company to let the official clip unroll. The trailer to the open-world game introduces viewers to Lucia, a woman who blames her incarceration on “bad luck, I guess”.

Lucia is the main character in the game alongside an unnamed male lead. She is the GTA franchise’s first female protagonist

How big is the game? Let’s look at some figures. The previous GTA game, Grand Theft Auto V, has sold more than 190m copies since 2013 and then include its online iteration GTA Online, which will make it the single-most profitable entertainment product of all time — it has generated more than $7.7b for publisher Take-Two.

The trailer teases a 2025 release date, and will unfold in Rockstar’s fictional Miami setting, Vice City, which was last seen in GTA: Vice City Stories. In it we see Lucia several times, first wearing an orange “inmate” shirt, gazing into a prison yard, and, later, bursting into a store with a gun and a bandanna mask.

Sam Houser, president of Rockstar, said in a statement that the game would “push the limits of what’s possible in highly immersive, story-driven open-world experiences”.

More than a decade after Grand Theft Auto V was released, the first look of the highly-anticipated sequel, Grand Theft Auto VI, is out

The trailer plays out to Tom Petty’s Love Is a Long Road and includes zooming speedboats and sports cars… and lots of twerking. Needless to say, it’s not suitable for office viewing! The number was co-written by Mike Campbell, who was inspired by a motorcycle he owned. Petty and Campbell recorded a demo that Petty described as “chaotic, with a lot of drum fills”.

GTA VI has had its share of leaks. Earlier this year, a teenager from the UK was found responsible for last year’s leak that distributed 90 videos from the in-development process. Grand Theft Auto games come with narratives around robberies and kidnappings but a player can simply cruise the streets listening to the radio.