More rumors than you can shake a can of Sprunk at. Here’s a round-up of all Grand Theft Auto VI rumors – release date, locations, female protagonist, and more.
It’s hard to believe that GTA V is six years old and still going strong. When it was released back in 2013, it firmly established Rockstar as one of, if not the, biggest companies in the industry and its spin-off, GTA Online, has gone on to be a million-dollar a day money-making machine. The initial attraction to GTA V lay behind the fact that Rockstar crafted an almost perfect game with an expertly crafted story that more than complemented jaw-dropping graphics and the ability to play as three separate protagonists. It was a revelation that raised the bar for everybody else when it came to narrative-driven games.
Having said all that, six-years is a long shelf life for anything, let alone a video-game, so it was inevitable that fans of the franchise would start getting a little itchy and start to ponder when and what the next entry into the series would be all about. This has led to a whole host of rumors about GTA VI, some of which are as crazy as Trevor on a meth bender and others that sound a little more plausible and as Gamepur’s resident Rockstar fanboy it’s my job to gather all of these in one place before passing judgment on whether or not they have any chance of happening.
So welcome to the GTA VI Rumours Round-Up, allow me to be your guide.
GTA VI: Release Date, Locations, Female Lead, Features, And More
PS5 Launch Title
As soon as Sony dropped the gigantic news that the PS5 would be with us in about a year, the internet lit up with speculation on every last aspect of it. It seemed like everyone and their grandma had an opinion on what the new kid on the block was going to be about, and it didn’t take long before the eye of speculation gazed on possible launch titles for the console. Quite a few were batted about such as Bloodborne 2 and Elder Scrolls VI, but in a small corner of the interweb, someone whispered GTA VI, and it started to gain some traction. Well, sorry, but that just ain’t going to happen. There’s no way, no way, that Sony has managed to convince Rockstar to get the newest installment of their beloved franchise ready in time for the PS5 launch and though I would quite happily sell my firstborn for this to come true, we’re going to be stuck with the usual dross that we always get when a new console is released.
Release Date
So if GTA VI isn’t going to be a PS5 launch title, then just when can we expect it to see the light of day? Well, according to the fountain of knowledge that is the internet, every year since 2014, but as we’re now about to wave goodbye to 2019 and there’s not even been a sniff of a new game, it’s safe to say that it’s going to be a while yet. I think it could be anywhere between two to five more long years before we get GTA VI. If you look at every Rockstar release since GTA IV there’s been a minimum of a couple of years between games and now that Red Dead Redemption 2 is about to be released on PC, and the fact that Red Dead Online is finally taking off, I’d be surprised if GTA VI saw the light of day before late 2021/early 2022. As I said in the intro, GTA Online is still raking in millions a day for the company, and I doubt that they’d be willing to lose that income, which they would as any online element in GTA VI would need time to grow. And even when we do get an official release date, don’t forget that it’s very unlikely to come out then as Rockstar always pushes their games back until they’re 100% happy with the final product.
Multiple Locations
Now, this is something I can get behind. With each release Rockstar has given us bigger and bigger maps, culminating in Red Dead Redemption 2 which is quite mind-boggling when you look at it and even more so when you try to traverse it, so it’s only logical that GTA VI will go even larger than that and the best way to achieve this would be to have the game set in multiple locations. With the mechanic already in place to jump between multiple protagonists, it isn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination to imagine they’d be able to apply it to moving around a gigantic map.
Location
There have been a few rumors regarding the location of GTA VI, such as Brazil and London, and even though I love the idea of belting around a Rockstar vision of my countries capital city, my money is on Vice City. Having already, kind of, revisited San Andreas in GTA V, there’s a very good chance that we’ll find our way back to Vice City in the new game. This is down to the fact that Rockstar has said, on more than one occasion, that they want to link every place that has been in the GTA universe and as all of them, with the exception of London, are parodies of American cities then there’s no reason to expect them to look anywhere else for a location for the new game.
Project Americas
This could’ve easily been placed in with the previous entry, but I think that it’s such bull-honky that it deserves a place all of its own. According to a now-deleted Reddit post, someone had managed to get the inside scoop on the GTA VI and was more than willing to share it with the world. This was a massive bullet point list that claimed the new game would follow one main character this time; a guy called Ricardo as he rises through the ranks as a drug lord. The game would also be set in Vice City and a city based on Rio de Janeiro and would cover two decades, the 70s and the 80s. It sounded realistic enough, but the fact remains that there is just no way that anyone working for Rockstar would ever have just handed out this information. First off, Rockstar is known for being one of the most secretive gaming companies ever and only let people know what they want them to know when they want them to know it and to think that someone in their employ would leak the entirety of GTA VI just for the lol’s is just stupid. Secondly, if someone had leaked this, then you know damn well that they would’ve been found and fired out of cannon into the sun by now. Just don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
A Female Lead
This is something that really should happen in GTA VI, and I’m surprised that it hasn’t yet. It shouldn’t be that big a deal in this day and age, but the fact that Rockstar has yet to put a female character front and center in one of their games as a playable character seems weird. It’s not like they can’t write strong female parts either, as both Sadie Adler and Bonnie McFarlene have proved, so the fact that one hasn’t yet appeared as a playable lead is just…odd. Expect this to change in GTA VI.
Online Only
This is an understandable rumor as GTA Online is a massive, out of control juggernaut that is just an excuse to print money. So it’s not that too much of a leap to suggest that Rockstar would forgo the single-player campaign and focus on the online portion of the game. The only problem with this is that since GTA III, Rockstar has made a name for itself by telling some of the most compelling stories that you’ll find in any form of entertainment and not just the gaming industry. It’s almost impossible to think that they’d sacrifice all of the goodwill they’ve gained from fans worldwide to chase that sweet, sweet online dollar. That’s not saying that GTA VI won’t, eventually, have a fantastic online universe to play around in but at the cost of a perfect single player option? Nah, leave that sort of thing to EA.
