Raul Bautista

Rockstar describes Raul Bautista as a bank robber, which puts him close to the vault sequence in the official screenshot set.

He's on the cover

He's prominent enough in the marketing to be on the cover art collage with Jason, Lucia and Boobie Ike, and again in the portraits Rockstar handed over for a Dazed feature. Rockstar puts its cover art together on purpose, and minor characters don't make it on. Everyone else in that collage is either playable or running a big part of the story's money.

We know one job title about him, so that spot on the cover is the most useful thing we've got.

Where a bank robber fits now

Grand Theft Auto V's heists were the most loved part of the game and also the most linear. They were set pieces with a planning menu bolted on, and they were pretty much the only place in the game where a robbery counted for anything. Grand Theft Auto 6 looks like it's spreading that out, with a reported three-tier store robbery system at the small end and an evidence-based police system that means any robbery leaves a trail behind it.

Edge's cover feature on 29 October, written from a demo Rockstar showed the magazine, adds a step before the big jobs. Edge reports that some story missions need you to raise money first, and the ways it lists are robbing gas stations, holding up jewellery stores and stealing cars to order for fences. So the small crimes pay for the big ones, which is how a career bank robber would tell you it works anyway.

A named bank robber on the cover suggests the big jobs are still in there. What we don't know is whether Raul's the one who teaches Jason and Lucia how it's done, the one who brings them in on a job, or the one they end up on the wrong side of. The series has done all three before.

What isn't known

Almost everything. Rockstar's given us a name, a job description, two pieces of art and nothing else. We haven't seen how he connects to Jason and Lucia, nobody's confirmed a voice actor, and he hasn't shown up in any released gameplay footage. We also don't know which story missions need money raised up front, or whether any of them are his.

We've kept this page light on claims on purpose. There's a lot of confident writing about this character going round, and it doesn't trace back to anything Rockstar has put out.