After years and years of waiting, rumors, fake leaks, real leaks, and teases, we at last know when the trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto game (presumably called GTA VI) will be here. On December 5, we’ll finally see the sequel to GTA V. That’s all very exciting. But, instead, let’s talk about something else: the birds in the teaser image.

If you aren’t aware, Rockstar posted an image announcing the release date for the upcoming GTA VI trailer that features a few palm trees and three birds flying into the sunset. Normally, nobody would care about these small, unimportant birds found in a piece of art teasing a trailer. But this isn’t a normal piece of art.

This new teaser image is, as far as I’m aware, the first official piece of content from Rockstar Games connected directly to GTA VI. After a decade of nothing, these birds are basically the first official characters we’ve met from the next Grand Theft Auto game. So I say, hello, birdies. What secrets can you reveal?

Well, let’s start with the obvious: These flying friends of ours likely confirm that birds will return in Grand Theft Auto VI.

You may scoff at that deduction, but keep in mind that historically the GTA franchise hasn’t featured many animals. Birds have been the rare exception to this rule, though most of the time in games like Vice City you can’t interact with them at all. Perhaps Rockstar including birds in this artwork is them signaling that animals will play a bigger role in the game world, something the big leak in 2022 pointed to.

Next, there is the number of birds featured in the art. Three. Hmmm, what does it mean?

Maybe a sign from Rockstar that there will be three playable characters in this entry just like in GTA V? That would go against what has been reported and what we saw in the leaked gameplay, but games change constantly in development, so it’s possible.

There is also a fan theory (yes, other people are also theorizing about the birds) that the three birds seen in the artwork are teasing the song that will be featured in the first trailer. According to them, Rockstar is hinting that Bob Marley’s famous song “Three Little Birds” will be included in the debut trailer on Tuesday.

Finally, we do need to address the fact that it’s far more likely that these birds, as nice as they seem, may mean nothing at all. Maybe these birds really are just part of the artwork, a way to add depth to the visual. Maybe an artist put them there because the game features seagulls, so it made sense to add some tiny birds to this lovely sunset to make the image feel more alive and interesting.

That’s the boring answer. But in life, that tends to be the accurate one most of the time. Sorry birds. At least we had some fun together.

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