Rockstar hand-placed everything in the GTA 6 trailer, wasn't procedural, ex animator says

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Former Rockstar Games animator Mike York has nothing but praise for the second Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer, and his breakdown gives gamers an idea of how the studio put it together behind the scenes.

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The new GTA 6 trailer has amassed tons of buzz (and views) for good reason: There's an incredible amount of high-level detail jam-packed into the 3-minute trailer. The footage is a marvel that was captured entirely on a base PlayStation 5, showing that Rockstar may have mastered the PS5 with Grand Theft Auto 6 the same way that they mastered the PS4 with Red Dead Redemption 2.

Ex-Rockstar animator Mike York shares his thoughts on the trailer in a new 34-minute reaction video and gives lots of insight on GTA 6 from a game developer's perspective. According to York, everything in the footage looks hand-placed, which represents an incredible amount of work for Rockstar's dev team.

Below we have a quick transcript of what York said in the first 8 minutes or so:

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"In this beginning shot, this opening shot, they show that off to us. They show this moment here where everything is kind of alive--you can see the birds flying over. What I think that's impressive is that this feels very natural. This doesn't feel...I've talked about this a lot, in other videos, why I think that Rockstar Games is very impressive in what they do. One thing that's really impressive is that everything looks hand-placed.

"Nothing looks procedurally generated. It doesn't look like they let the computer make the buildings or place them. It looks like every single tree and plant and rock has been hand-placed by an artist, and turned, and rotated, and tilted and moved up and down...

"You can see the hand and care that's has taken place here. Every single little chair, everything. It's incredible, it looks so good. I love that, because it's got a touch to it.

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"If you look at this scene, it's got a hand-made touch. You can see there's a piece of tarp up here that's under a piece of wood that's been nailed down that's like blowing in the wind. There's a little iguana here, checking around. I saw him in the trailer and I'm like 'look at this little dude!'

"There's so many details and everything is strategically placed. All these little puddles, it just looks really, really nice. The detail here looks so good, especially the lighting.

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"To me, the thing that stands out to me, is the lighting. And man, if you look at some of these details--when this old man comes in to place his foot on the sand, you can feel the sand go down a little bit, you can see a rock kick up and [some] dust. They're kicking it up a notch here.

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"And look, when he steps on the ladder, the ladder's like wiggling a little bit. The animators are really putting in some nice quality touches to some of this stuff. LIttle baby nuances that I never saw in GTA V, or that a lot of us weren't able to put in there, and now they're putting in there.

"It's because of time's sake, right? They've had lots of time now, and some of these animations have really upped their game."

Grand Theft Auto 6 releases on May 26, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check our GTA 6 hub for more news, info, and coverage.