The story of Jason and Lucia in GTA 6 seems to take more inspiration from Red Dead Redemption 2 than from GTA 5, according to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier.
He shared this after visiting Rockstar Games for a behind-the-scenes look at the game.
Rockstar didn’t let Schreier play GTA 6. Instead, he watched Rob Nelson, one of the studio’s development leads, play as Jason in a session focused on the relationship between the two main characters. Schreier mentioned that he had recently replayed the first hour of GTA 5 and found its characters exhausting because they often insult and yell at each other.
Schreier described Jason and Lucia as “two people who actually enjoy spending time together.” In the demo, Jason called Lucia to meet up, and with one button press, he kissed her when she arrived. They walked through a park holding hands, then went to a gym, where Jason did squats and Lucia used the treadmill.
The session also showed the couple’s criminal activities. Jason and Lucia checked out a bank as a possible target, but Jason decided not to go through with it because there were too many guards. Later, they sneaked into the back office of a petrol station, disabled an alarm, and quietly took the cash.
Rockstar told Bloomberg that the game world has hundreds of small interiors players can enter, such as offices and petrol stations. The feature also includes comments from Rockstar’s head of publishing Jennifer Kolbe and development leads Aaron Garbut, Phil Hooker, and Rob Nelson.
Rockstar has not explained what influenced the GTA 6 story, and Schreier’s opinion is based on a brief, hands-off preview. The studio’s official summary says the story starts with an easy job that goes wrong, drawing Jason and Lucia into a criminal conspiracy across the fictional state of Leonida and making them depend on each other to survive.
GTA 5, released in September 2013, featured three main characters—Michael, Franklin, and Trevor—and focused heavily on satire. Red Dead Redemption 2, released in October 2018, followed Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang in a slower, more emotional story about loyalty within the group.
GTA 6 is scheduled to be released on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.