Rockstar Games are known for their big open worlds and ambitious cinematic swings, but they are just as much about painstaking attention to detail and meticulously fusing the real and the imaginary into an uncanny send-up of American culture that’s both fun to play and hard not to marvel at. So it’s not entirely surprising that the beer looks incredible in Grand Theft Auto VI, but it’s still worth obsessing over.
Cold ones were a major motif throughout the second GTA VI trailer, and not just because bars, clubs, and other fixtures of Vice City nightlife make up important locations in the game. It’s hot down there in not-Miami and the rest of Rockstar’s pastiche of southern Florida, a fact visually underlined by the beads of perspiration gathering on bottles even after the sun goes down.
While it’s been a glaze-fest out there over the level of visual detail on display in the trailer, many fans have pointed to the beers in particular. Some are even calling them the horse testicles of GTA VI, as fans might remember that the ones in Red Dead Redemption 2 had their own physics and also got bigger or smaller depending on the temperature.
One part of the trailer shows a scene in a room with the TV on (is that you, Phil Cassidy?) and two beers on the table, and the individual bubbles can be seen floating up to the surface beneath the amber glass. “If beer bubbles are 1tb of textures and graphics… I support this whole heartedly,” one person wrote.
There’s also a moment when romantic leads Jason and Lucia are outside clinking glasses on a deck. You can practically feel the gold foil peeling off of the tops of their parody Modelo bottles. The liquid even splashes inside when the bottles collide.
And then there’s the treasure trove of new screenshots Rockstar released after the fact. How closely they resemble GTA VI as it will actually look when running at home on your own PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S remains to be seen, but they’re certainly flexing a similar level of sudsy exceptionalism. The one that appears at the top of this article shows light glistening off the side of a beer bottle in Jason’s hand as the translucent arm of his friend Cal Hampton can be seen through the tinted glass.
Another screenshot shows Cal in a pool with a beer can floating in the water next to him as little bubbles trickle up to the surface from the backwash that’s still leaking out. Warmed-over dregs of carbonation popping in 4K is as big-budget “next-gen” blockbuster as it gets. More than a decade has passed between GTA V and GTA VI, and Rockstar is clearly not taking that lightly. It seems impossible to think that the most anticipated game release ever can live up to the hype. Whether the game as a whole does or doesn’t, though, it sure looks like the beer bottles will.
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