Back in 2022, Bloomberg reported that “Rockstar Games cleaned up its frat-boy culture – and Grand Theft Auto, too.” The changes took shape in different ways, from less crunch to a narrowing of the gender pay gap for workers at the studio, and to the introduction of the game’s first playable female character, a Latina named Lucia. And now, in the second trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, we’re seeing that the game’s marketing has changed a bit from previous entries, too.

To illustrate the difference, let’s go back in time to the marketing of smash hit GTA 5, which was released in 2013. The game’s first trailer came out in 2011, its second in 2012. There were three protagonists, and both of the trailers feature a lot of voiceover from Michael de Santa (Ned Luke), a career criminal who’s now seeing a therapist as part of a Tony Soprano-esque midlife crisis. The trailers mostly focus on action; there are exciting car chases and a big crime spree involving collaboration between the three main characters, although the other two don’t get as much screen time as Michael in these first two trailers.

The series’ sense of humor — which arguably does skew towards making fun of right-wing targets, despite the series’

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