The ElRubius GTA 6 Session: What Rockstar Showed Off-Camera

His account starts months earlier, with an email from Rockstar. He describes going quiet on stream at the time and letting his audience assume it was personal news, which is the part that made the video's opening make sense in retrospect.

The visit itself was Edinburgh. He says he was met in the garage, told he could not record or photograph anything inside, and put his phone in airplane mode rather than be tempted. A large R in the entrance, a display case of merchandise and awards, oversized character posters, and three floors of people working.

The detail he keeps returning to is the first sight of the game: not a demo, but an employee's monitor seen in passing on the way upstairs, with Jason in third person on one screen and a development tool open on the other.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

He states plainly in the video that Rockstar invited him and three other creators from around the world, and that each was given a different experience inside the game so that they would come away with different things to describe. The other three are TGG, Davy Jones and Mike ShowSha.

He also describes himself as the first Spanish-speaking creator to set foot in the offices. That is a specific claim and a narrower one than the version circulating, which has him as the first creator to receive official access outright. His own words do not support the broader reading.

Nobody played. Nelson held the controller for the entire session and ElRubius chose what to do — which he characterises as the most exciting back-seat driving of his life, since he could make decisions and watch the game respond in real time.

He says Rockstar is not paying him and that the opinions in the video, favourable and otherwise, are his.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

The session opened in an apartment he says has not appeared in any trailer. Before leaving it, Nelson opened the fridge — stocked, and the drink he took out opened with the bottle behaving like glass and the liquid moving inside it. Light switches and doors could be operated on the way out.

Outside, a plaza near the beach: people running, talking, playing basketball. An electric scooter parked there, which he points out is a vehicle type no Grand Theft Auto has had.

The thing he stops on is a woman walking a dog. Approaching produces a prompt to ask the owner's permission to pet it — and in this case the answer was no, the dog barked and the owner swore at him. Walking away, Jason's arm caught the leash, and the leash had physics and reacted to his body.

Riding the scooter, Nelson pressed a button and Jason kicked a pedestrian while moving. The equivalent in a car, later, was flinging the driver's door open into people and other vehicles.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

Kicking that pedestrian triggered what he calls the heat system: red zones appear on the map marking where the police are searching, and you have to get out of them before you are found.

He confirms the meter goes to six stars, and that Nelson would not tell him what happens if you reach that point. His own guess is the military, and he says so as a guess.

He describes the evidence icons the same way the Extended Look shows them: below the stars, indicators of how the police can recognise you — face, clothing, vehicle. Changing clothes or removing glasses or a mask throws them off. They also know whether you were working as a pair, which he takes to mean there will be moments where Jason and Lucia are better off separating.

The part that is not in the video: high-end cars carry trackers. Steal one and the police know exactly where it is, past the usual limits of a search. There are garages that will disable a tracker, and he says it is not cheap.

Press previews add the detail that turns that into a decision rather than a penalty: the alternative to paying is speed. Get far enough ahead of the tracker's signal and it stops being useful, and if you cannot, the answer is to abandon the car before the police arrive at it.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

This is the part of his account with no equivalent in the Extended Look, and the reason the two are separate articles.

Fuel. Vehicles have a gauge and have to be refuelled at petrol stations, which also repair them. He put the obvious objection to Nelson — that this gets tedious — and reports being told it is not meant to, because the tank takes a long time to empty.

Inventory is limited. No pocket arsenal: long weapons live in the trunk of your personal car or in bags. The weapon wheel is split into two sections, one for weapons and one for clothing, accessories and consumables.

Focus, which he compares to Red Dead Redemption 2's Dead Eye. Jason used it during a chase to pick out weak points on a vehicle. It is a bar, and it refills with the drinks mentioned earlier — which is what the fridge was for.

Stealing a parked car is a lockpicking minigame played with the sticks, with tools like crowbars and cards, and doing it properly avoids setting off the alarm. Trunks can be opened and looted. Shooting an engine disables the car.

Bodies fit in trunks. So do you.

The San Andreas body system is back. He noticed Jason looked heavier-set and Lucia's proportions had changed from the trailers, asked about it, and says Nelson confirmed the characters change physically depending on what you eat, how much you train and what you spend your time doing.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

Robberies are not restricted to story missions. Nelson opened the map, put a marker on a jewellery store, and the map itself did work: it showed the building in three dimensions, the estimated value of what was inside, and whether there was a back door to come in through.

They went in masked. The back door was locked, so they went through the front, with Lucia covering the room while Jason worked. There was a safe at the back with more than one way of opening it, and in this case a note on an employee's desk had the combination on it.

The loot is physical. Gold bars, diamonds and cash are individual objects picked up one at a time with their own animations, and he describes the same thing when robbing a petrol station: you open the register and take the money note by note.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

He describes the relationship as something the game tracks. Spending time together strengthens it and makes them more effective working as a team; abandoning one of them in a firefight makes them angry and damages it. And a damaged relationship shows up in gameplay — specifically, he says, in how well robberies go.

There is also a morality layer he describes as a criminal profile: a professional standing that changes how the world and the police respond to you, and which he recalls being told also feeds into the relationship.

The moment he uses to illustrate all of it is a text message. He and Nelson had spent so long trying to find a helicopter that they had left Jason behind after a job, and Jason texted to ask whether they had forgotten something.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

The helicopter hunt is the best evidence in his account for how much of the world is enterable. He asked whether they could fly over the city. Nelson said it would be difficult, because helipads exist on tall buildings but a helicopter actually being parked on one at that moment is unlikely.

They went to a hotel. The lobby could be entered and explored. There was a choice between the lift and the stairs. They took the lift to the top floor with no loading screen, found the door to the helipad, and there was a helicopter on it.

He is explicit that he expected the usual teleport-to-roof and did not get it.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

He says a technician in the room told him the map is three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's.

He also says Leonida is an island, and that there is no landmass to the north of the kind community maps had speculated about — while noting that the fan-made map that circulated on Steam, built from trailers and screenshots, was not far off.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

It does not run at 60fps. He asked whether that was specific to the base PS5 and was told it was not, and Nelson would not give him a figure for the PS5 Pro. He says it feels fluid regardless.

The HUD. He found the screen filling up with text and interaction prompts, asked whether it could be turned off, and says he was told yes.

There is no first-person mode. He asked, and says he was told it is not in at the moment. His own theory that it arrives later with a PC or next-generation release is a theory, and he presents it as one.

Minor animation bugs in specific moments, which he says the team noticed immediately and logged.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.

The joke of the video, and the thing his audience took from it, is an iguana. He had spent months telling his stream that a crowned iguana seen in official material mattered, and closes the video by saying he was right.

Underneath the joke there is an actual system. He says he was told there is a bestiary — his word for it is a Pokédex — where the animals you come across are recorded.

Source: ElRubius, 'Esto es GTA VI', August 27, 2026.