Rubius Spent Three Hours With GTA 6, and His Notes Explain the Backflip Everyone Hated

The Extended Look showed. It rarely said. Twenty six minutes of footage and almost no explanation of why anything on screen was happening. Spanish YouTuber El Rubius got close to three hours with the game at Rockstar North in July, according to Notebookcheck, with Rob Nelson beside him, and his late August recap answers a lot of what the footage left open. Reddit user El_Pintor64 translated the notes, and a round-up of roughly 36 details did the rounds on r/GTA6.

Same caveat as every account from that trip. This is a Spanish creator’s memory of a pre-release build, passed through a volunteer translation, and Rubius himself hedges on one point below. Read it as a good witness statement, not a spec sheet.

Almost every item explains a moment fans had already argued about. Rubius did not see new footage. He saw the same game with the commentary turned on.

Take the most argued-over second in the whole showcase. A character drops off a platform into the sea with a full backflip, it reads too light for the height, and animator Aaron Baker’s critique went everywhere, as our criticism round-up covered. What none of us knew was that the player picked the flip.

According to Rubius, relayed by another creator who attended the same sessions, diving into water in GTA 6 is controllable. You choose your speed, whether you flip, and which way, in a system he compares to the dives in the Spider-Man games on PS5. So the Extended Look did not show Rockstar’s default dive. It showed someone in the capture room deciding a backflip would look good off a ledge that did not warrant one. Baker’s read of the animation still stands. The complaint that Rockstar chose it does not.

Rubius asked Rob Nelson about first person and was told it had not been implemented in that build, firmer than the old line that previewers simply did not see it. And the default movement pace is configurable, normal walk or fast jog. Our movement guide tracks both.

The Extended Look ends on a rooftop. Rubius explains how you get to one. He wanted a helicopter and headed for a large hotel with a helipad, expecting the usual GTA fudge. Instead the lobby was open. He could take the stairs or the lift, rode the lift to the top floor with no loading screen, walked onto the helipad and took the helicopter sitting there.

That run says more than any interior count. Our interiors guide tracks the gap between the old 700 rumour and the answer of hundreds a second creator says Rob Nelson gave him. Rubius does not settle the count. He settles the quality: a tall building can be a real place, not a lobby with a teleport on top. Whether it was the Ocean View, the Kington or something unnamed, we do not know.

The other interior is the pair’s apartment, and not the one in the Extended Look. Bottles open with their own animation and the liquid moves. Doors open and shut. Light switches work. His phrase, via translation, is that almost everything in the safehouse can be interacted with, which takes our safehouse guide past the shaving footage. The apartment page now has a second address to wonder about.

The best chain of events in the account starts with a jam on a motorway. Traffic backed up behind a wreck whose occupants turned out to be masked robbers, their haul spilled across the tarmac. Rob got out, shot them, took the loot. Then the drivers stuck in the jam, who had watched all of it, recognised Lucia’s clothes and car and called the police. The chase ended with cruisers slamming Lucia against her own car, panels flying until it would not drive, and a slow-motion crash camera firing in free roam. Nobody scripted any of that.

It is the clearest demonstration yet of the wanted system: witnesses are people who saw something, not an abstract meter. It also shows the living world generating money on its own.

Two combat details. Rubius saw a shotgun blast remove an NPC’s head entirely, while adding that he cannot promise that level of gore survives to the final build. Our combat guide has dismemberment filed as an open question. Then the physical-comedy column: Jason can swing the driver’s door open while moving to hit pedestrians, Rob kicked one from a moving electric scooter, and Lucia puts bodies in car boots. You can climb into one yourself. Rubius does not explain what hiding in a boot is for. I have some ideas.

The funniest detail carries the most gameplay weight. Rubius and Rob switched to Lucia, found the helicopter and flew off, having forgotten Jason was with them. A moment later Jason texted her, roughly: forgetting something? With a laughing emoji. Sarcasm arrives by phone.

Then the serious part. Rubius says leaving the other lead behind, particularly in a shootout, makes them angry, and the relationship is not cosmetic. How well the two work together depends on where things stand, and that includes how well robberies go. That is harder than anything in our relationship guide so far, and it fits the break-up answer MikeShowSha got from Rob Nelson in the companion piece. Neglect costs you at the jewellery counter.

What does not cost you is a night out. Rubius asked about Jason visiting a strip club and Rob told him Lucia could simply come along. No jealousy system, no nagging.

Rubius picked a jewellery store from the 3D map, which showed an estimated loot value and the layout, rear entrance included. That door was locked, so they went in the front. While Jason searched the back, an AI-controlled Lucia held the staff at gunpoint on her own, and a safe code written on an employee’s desk opened the safe. The robbery guide has the framework. This is the first account of the map doing the planning for you.

Some of what Rubius saw is too small to read at trailer speed. You cannot pet every dog. You ask the owner, and some dogs refuse while some owners turn hostile. Leads are simulated: Rubius walked into one and it wrapped around Jason’s arm rather than passing through him. Animals you meet are logged in a bestiary he compares to a Pokedex, the wildlife study system with a checklist.

He tested the beach. Rockstar wound the clock to afternoon and the beach filled up the way Vice Beach does in the trailers. Sand takes footprints. Clothes come out of the water wet. A naked man appears in the street asking to be taken home, and helping him leads to a side event with a reward, which Rubius declined to spoil beyond confirming that certain parts of him have physics. GTA has not been sanitised.

Two practical notes. Rob confirmed that interaction prompts can be switched off. And petrol stations repair as well as refuel, with consumption tuned slow because, in Rob’s words as Rubius relays them, Rockstar does not want refuelling to be busywork. The fuel guide has said roughly that for months.

The Extended Look was the trailer. This was the director’s commentary.