It’s been two weeks since Rockstar Games dropped the first taste of the highly-anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI in the form of a short teaser trailer, fans have been clamoring for more. With concrete details sparse and the game’s release likely years away, enthusiasts have instead turned to endless speculation and conspiracy theories to fill the information void. As the wait for a second trailer drones on, these theories are growing more elaborate and, frankly, ridiculous.
Connecting Bullet Holes like Braille
Exhibit A in the case of unhinged GTA 6 speculation came recently from a Reddit user named 27guy. Having thoroughly analyzed the reveal trailer’s promotional artwork of protagonists Lucia and Jason, 27guy made an unbelievable leap: they connected the random pattern of bullet holes peppering the car behind the characters as if decoding Braille.
Through this digital scrying, the Redditor somehow extracted the message “One more, September” and presented it as evidence GTA 6’s second trailer would arrive at some unspecified date in September 2024.
So some people are using the bullet holes in the car from the #GTA6 official artwork and in Braille it says,The next #GTAVI Trailer will be in September 2024! I hope that is fake because that is way too long for a second trailer hopefully we get a next trailer April 2024 🌴🌊🌇🌃 pic.twitter.com/JwYZjgFDwp
— PainKiller (@PainkillerH20) December 18, 2023
It’s the kind of pattern recognition reminiscent of Pepe Silvia from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia — seeing complex meaning in meaningless noise. Other commenters soon piled on both in disbelief and reluctant support. “My man. You are way too deep in the hole,” one understandably reacted. However, given the lack of actual news, some were willing to buy into anything: “What the most waited game does to a man.”
Map Extrapolation from Minimal Visuals
27guy’s Braille bullet holes are only the latest in increasingly speculative theorizing from the ravenous GTA community. Earlier this month, other fans went frame-by-frame through the footage looking for glimpses of the new game’s setting to try and piece together the entire map.
Never mind that the trailer shows mostly close-up shots of Lucia and Jason that give little sense of geography. Instead, these digital cartographers are interpolating massive tropical islands and urban Florida vistas from brief wide shots of single streets and beaches.
It’s the same phenomenon that happened in the lead up to 2018’s Red Dead Redemption II. With little to go on, fans scoured what details did emerge for clues about where the game was set, what time period, who the characters were, and so on until entire essays were written dissecting singular screenshots.
The Hazards of the Info Drought
This rampant speculation comes from a reasonable place: fans are simply desperate for more info about a game they’ve waited nearly a decade for. The ironic cruelty of Rockstar’s marketing strategy is that while said speculation keeps GTA 6 conversations active and hype high, it also risks expectations becoming unmatchable.
When every blurry shape in the trailer’s skyline gets turned into an imagined landmark, how can the real game map hope to compare for those who bought into the myths? When Redditors are predicting story beats and launch dates from fiction, reality is bound to disappoint in contrast.
Managing the Hype in the meantime
GTA 6 won’t live up to the wild expectations fans imagine. Since GTA V is still making big bucks, Rockstar isn’t in a hurry to hype up the new game. Fans need to chill on speculation and keep their excitement in check until more info comes out.
Watch out for wild theories about GTA 6, like riding mammoths and jetpack horses. Don’t expect too much, or you might be disappointed. Take a deep breath and consider crazy ideas as just fans being eager. More wacky theories will probably pop up before we get real information.
