It is clear that the Grand Theft Auto series has a huge following all over the world, and this is mostly due to the success of Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V for short), a game that has sold more than 140 million copies since its release in 2013, making it one of the best-selling, most-loved and most popular games of all time.
Actually, GTA V has been such a success that we haven’t got a new GTA game since 2013, making this the longest stretch of time without a new entry in the open-world, crime-themed series.
This could be changing as a new GTA game could be in the works at Rockstar, with new rumored details having emerged about it as was recently covered in Forbes.
YouTuber and leaker Tom Henderson posted a video on YouTube revealing supposed details about the next GTA entry (GTA 6), including the fact that Rockstar is planning to take the game back to Vice City.
Those who’ve been playing the series long enough know that this was the setting of the 2003 game GTA: Vice City, one of the best in the series. The game was set in the 80’s and let you cruise through the Miami-based, neon-light city to the tune of Cutting Crew’s “I just died in your arms” and had a plot based on TV series such as Miami Vice. Players, though, will supposedly get to visit a present-day version of Vice City in the upcoming GTA 6 instead.
The modern-day setting has to do with Rockstar having more latitude to come up with cosmetics items for GTA Online, letting it draw from any era of the past and not just the good old 80’s it seems…
Also, another big change we’ll supposedly see in GTA 6 is that it will feature a female protagonist for the first time ever. That’s right, a series that’s been criticized in the past for its sexism will include a female character in its next outing, presumably a hacker, tech-savvy type amongst its playable characters, which will be several as in GTA V.
This would be a nice touch, especially taking into account that beating up prostitutes to reclaim money paid to them has been a thing in the series for some time now… Maybe the game featuring a strong, female lead will help erase Rockstar’s reputation for sexism, or maybe not. And hopefully the other characters will hopefully be as interesting as the likes of Franklin, Trevor and Michael were in GTA V too…
But despite having multiple characters to play as, though, GTA 6 won’t have the series’ biggest map to date but will feature Fortnite-like map changes, certainly adding an interesting twist to the game. It will also get bigger through DLC over time too as per this rumor.
Of course, it’s clear Rockstar is in no hurry to produce GTA 6 – it simply can afford it, as GTA Online is still a cash cow as Forbes points out, it making a ton of money from microtransactions every year with players buying all sorts of stuff in the game including virtual properties…
This means that GTA 6 will not be hitting shelves until 2024 or 2025 according to the Tom Henderson video, especially taking into account the game is still early in development, while Rockstar also wants to avoid putting its employees under pressure as this led to much controversy as the US developer had subjected its staff to an unhealthy amount of crunch during Red Dead Redemption 2’s final stages of development in 2018.
So GTA 6 fans will have to take it easy and be patient when waiting for GTA 6, but at least now they know that a new entry in the open-world series is coming their way, and that sometime in the future they’ll likely be roaming around Vice City in a new Rockstar adventure.