You should take most leaks with a grain of salt, but especially anything visual from a release as locked down as GTA 6. Alas, someone managed to make a convincing replication of Rockstar's upcoming blockbuster, to the point of gaining major coverage, and they've now owned the hoax, and explained how they did it.
Earlier this month, an apparent leak of Grand Theft Auto 6 showing one of the protagonists, Jason, on a bridge passing several vehicles was uploaded to a mysterious and now-deleted Instagram account. The source claimed it was from someone who worked at their studio - the 'my uncle's friend knows someone, honest!' schtick - and naturally, it travelled like wildfire.
It was all nonsense, and its creator, known as tenshi, came clean in a video and adjoining Reddit AMA. "My main goal was to see if I could actually create a believable-looking scene from GTA 6 by recreating everything from the ground up," he states on Reddit. "Honestly, the response was way bigger than I ever anticipated."
I'll say. It's an impressive piece of work for one person. The setting for his scene is Venetian Bridge in Miami, a smart choice since the game's backdrop is Leonidas, a fictionalized version of Florida that may, indeed, include a version of the same bit of architecture.
"This wasn't just a simple edit," he adds. "I spent months rebuilding a specific fragment of Miami, recreating the UI and spending way too many hours on the post-processing to make it look authentic. I even scrapped my first few versions because they just didn't feel right."
In his video, he goes deeper on his design MO, including how he made it feel like something from a desk at the home of GTA and Red Dead Redemption. "Since we're aiming for that early build look, I'm leaning into Rockstar's playbook and reusing assets," tenshi says.
"I grabbed a truck from GTA 5, but to really sell it, I slapped on a custom Piswasser livery. It's exactly the kind of detail that gets the internet talking." Oh, how right you were. Rockstar has the opportunity to do something very funny here, and it'd be even better if it was part of the third trailer. Until then, this is another reminder - always be wary.
