Tattoos, hair and clothing

Rockstar's press material shows appearance customisation as a set of businesses you visit, with no character menu in sight, and the businesses have names.

Tattoos at Electric Fang

A neon frontage with a snarling animal head on the sign, shot at night. Inside, the shots show work in progress and finished results: a full back piece, arm and leg work, and a client waiting with a phone.

Tattoos have been in Grand Theft Auto since San Andreas, and they've usually been a menu behind a door. Photographing the process, with an artist mid-session, suggests something more staged than a list of decals.

Hair at Sara's Salon

There are three images: a couple outside the shopfront, a man with a finished cut, and a client in the chair mid-appointment with a stylist working behind her.

That matters for Lucia especially. Her screenshots have carried most of the game's appearance work so far, with her haircuts, piercings and jewellery changing across the official set.

Rockstar's edition copy does list one bit of what the salon offers. The Ultimate Edition adds exclusive facial hair for Jason and makeup options for Lucia at Sara's. On the PlayStation Store it's called Sara's Unisex Salon, and it's one of five Special Destinations the Ultimate upgrade unlocks.

Goodtime Gear and the outfit packs

Goodtime Gear shows up as branded clothing worn in front of a Vice City mural. The Ultimate Edition includes a set of Vice City Style outfits, shown across five images on both leads, and the Vintage Vice City Pack pre-order bonus adds period outfits and hairstyles for both leads (what each edition unlocks).

Rockstar's edition comparison also lists extra in-game shops for Ultimate without naming them (Standard against Ultimate). Three of the businesses on this page, Sara's, Stock 305 and Electric Fang, are on the store's Special Destinations list, so some of what's pictured here may be Ultimate content. Rockstar hasn't said what Standard players get.

Stock 305 and the PTT Store

Two more named businesses appear in Rockstar's images. Stock 305 is covered in graffiti with a wall of spray cans inside, which made it look like a paint supplier, but the PlayStation Store listing says it's a streetwear shop in Stockyard. 305 is Miami's area code, which is about as direct as naming gets.

The PTT Store shot is chaotic enough that we won't try to say what kind of shop it is. It shows a robbery or a fight going on inside, with somebody riding a motorcycle through the place.

Making you drive to the barber

Appearance systems get more use when they take up space in the world. San Andreas made you drive to a barber. Grand Theft Auto V kept the shops but let a lot of the work happen through menus, and Grand Theft Auto Online eventually folded most of it into interfaces.

Naming four separate businesses and photographing inside them hints at which way this game's going. It's only a hint, though, and Rockstar hasn't actually said so.

Clothes and the police

Edge's 29 October cover feature answers part of the evidence question, from a Rockstar demo. Witness reports can include what you look like and what you're wearing, and changing clothes makes you harder to recognise. Splitting up with Lucia blurs the description as well. So on Edge's account, a change of outfit is one of the ways you lose the police in this game (the wanted system).

That Lucia clothes-shop clip

A TikTok clip of Lucia browsing a clothes shop went round in late October with a caption saying it was the real game. There's no early access, and the clip's almost certainly fake or AI (our warning about it). Don't treat it as a look at the clothing menu.

What isn't known

Beyond the edition extras, Rockstar hasn't described any of these systems or published a menu of options, and it hasn't said which ones each character can use or which shops are tied to the Ultimate Edition. Edge's report covers clothing and the police, but nobody's said whether tattoos or a new haircut count in the evidence system the way a change of clothes does.