Polygon.com / 07.05.25

GTA 6 is sexy but we still can't see the kissing

Theres one cut in the new Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer that youve probably seen in a thousand movie trailers before. Two beautiful people are presented in extreme close-up. The lights are low. The music is pulsing. Their faces are close. They angle their heads and lean in closer. Their lips part and cut! Its a marketing technique thats almost as old as romantic movies themselves. Build up the heat and leave us wanting more. Delay the gratification of the kiss and all it stands for romance and sex, emotional and physical resolution until youve sold the tickets. But theres another reason Rockstar might have chosen to demurely cut away: kissing in video games nearly always looks dumb. Game developers can make skin glow, they can make hair toss, they can capture light refracting in a characters eyes, or a furrow of doubt creasing a brow. But they cant yet make lips smoosh together in a way that looks remotely convincing, let alone alluring. Take a recent example of a game in which kissing is...
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