Grand Theft Auto 6–or GTA 6–doesn’t have a release date yet. In fact, we don’t even know if that will be the game’s official name, but we do at least know it’s in active development. We also have some reported details coming in that could make the game very interesting Rockstar Games finally confirmed its development in 2022, more than eight years after the release of GTA 5, and given the studio’s tendency to only release games when they’re good and ready, it’s difficult to tell when we’ll actually be able to play it. Game development can take a very long time nowadays, compared to the early and mid-2000s when four Grand Theft Auto games released in just seven years.
Little, if anything, is concrete regarding Grand Theft Auto 6’s details thus far, but there have been a whole bunch of rumors. These vary wildly, with some touching on who you will play as–possibly including a playable woman for the first time in the series’ single-player mode–to where the game will take place. It doesn’t take a dedicated trickster to make up rumors involving a setting we’ve already seen in the series, like Vice City or Liberty City, but a few others have been mentioned, as well. These are all the rumors we’ve heard about Grand Theft Auto 6 thus far.
Rumor: GTA 6 will star a twin brother and sister
Building on past rumors that GTA 6 will feature a playable female character for the first time in the series (not counting created GTA Online characters) a rumor now says this will be one of two main characters in the game. According to a report from Xfire, the two characters will be twins–one man and one woman–on opposite sides of the drug war. It’s not clear if you’ll be able to play as both.
The report says that the game will take place around 20 years after their parents were murdered by a cartel, and the man has gone on to work for the DOA, a satirical version of the American Drug Enforcement Administration. His sister’s approach is to infiltrate the cartel in order to take revenge on those who murdered their parents in a …less legal way, and the conflict between the twins sounds like it will be at the heart of the story.
Rumor: GTA 6 will feature Manhunt’s Carcer City
There have been a ton of different rumors about where GTA 6 will take place, and several are included in this roundup. One of the more interesting comes courtesy of the same Xfire report that mentioned the twin protagonists: GTA 6 could feature Carcer City as a playable area.
What the heck is Carcer City? It’s the setting of the game Manhunt, which is arguably more controversial than Grand Theft Auto ever was, and it is already confirmed to exist within the same universe as the GTA games. It has been referenced several times throughout the Grand Theft Auto series, including in Grand Theft Auto 5. It’s a rundown and considerably more dangerous city than what we’ve seen in the Grand Theft Auto series to date, and if the report is true, it’s very unlikely it will be the only setting for GTA 6.
Rumor: GTA Online will add Liberty City
We’ve previously also heard rumors, which you can see in this post, that GTA 6 could partially take place in Liberty City. If so, it would make sense for the GTA Online component to also include the setting. The same Xfire report that gave us alleged details on the twin protagonists and Carcer City location also mentioned Liberty City coming to GTA Online. It wouldn’t be the first time Liberty City was made playable for multiplayer, as it was also available in the much less expansive Grand Theft Auto IV.
If this and the rumor about Vice City are true, however, it’s possible players will be able to join their friends on a trip between the two cities. Of course, in real life, their inspirations–New York City and Miami–are hours and hours apart by car, but that doesn’t really matter too much.
Rumor: GTA 6 will feature a female protagonist
In January 2021, rumors about GTA 6 featuring a playable female character began to make the rounds after Tom Henderson (known for his Call of Duty leaks) posted on Twitter, “For the first time ever in a GTA title, GTA 6 will have a playable female and male protagonist.”
This was later corroborated by a Bloomberg report, which said the woman would be one of two leading characters in a game that was framed like a modern-day retelling of Bonnie and Clyde.
Grand Theft Auto protagonists have encompassed a variety of fictional criminal archetypes–Vice City’s hot-tempered Tommy Vercetti, GTA 4’s mature, yet cynical Eastern European refugee Niko Bellic, and the naïve but good-hearted street gang underboss Carl “CJ” Johnson of San Andreas, to name a few. GTA 5 did something new for the series with its trio of playable characters, ranging from a retired career criminal living in luxury to a trailer park weapons dealer to a young gangbanger looking to make it big. And yet, the series has never featured a woman as a playable protagonist beyond the ability to customize your character in GTA Online. If this rumor is true it would be huge for the series.
In an interview with The Guardian back in 2013, Rockstar co-founder Dan House expressed the studio’s interest in exploring a female character at some point, stating, “In the future, could we do a game with a lead female character? Of course. We just haven’t found the right game for it yet, but it’s one of the things that we always think about.”
But Rockstar has yet to comment on anything regarding GTA 6’s story or characters in any official capacity, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Rumor: GTA 6 will be set in Miami or Vice City
Back in 2018, an “inside source” allegedly told Inside Gaming that GTA 6 will be set in Miami–likely meaning Vice City, given GTA’s history with fictionalized cities based on real ones. But as Inside Gaming mentions, Miami also technically exists within the GTA universe. Inside Gaming points to a Digital Trends interview with Leslie Benzies, the now-former president of Rockstar North, to further probe this rumor Come from Sports betting site VPbet . When asked if GTA will ever return to Vice City, Benzies stated, “It is always a possibility.” Not a lot to go off of exactly.
Later, Bloomberg also reported that GTA 6 would be set in Vice City, with the game having previously aimed for a more-ambitious approach called Project Americas that would have covered both North and South America. More on that rumor below. However, the game will also reportedly get bigger over time, possibly with new cities added.
Rumor: GTA 6 will be set in both the US and South America
Inside Gaming’s “inside source” also claims that GTA 6 is codenamed Project Americas, which refers to a feature that will allow players to fly between two settings, one in the United States, and one in South America. As Inside Gaming points out, the South American drug trade–notably the “cocaine highway” between Colombia and Miami in the ’80s–has been the subject of tons of popular media, so if GTA 6 were to return to Vice City, it would also make sense for it to be a period piece like 2002’s Vice City. According to Benzies, “Vice City, perhaps more than any other GTA game, was as much about the era as the setting. Miami in the 1980’s is so iconic it would feel strange to revisit the city in a different time period.”
As with everything else in this story, Rockstar has yet to comment officially on GTA 6’s setting, so we have only rumors from anonymous sources and fan speculation to go off of.
Rumor: GTA 6 will be set in Liberty City and Vice City
In 2019, an anonymous Pastebin post made the rounds after the author, claiming to be an Environment Artist at Rockstar Games, leaked unverified information about GTA 6. The post alleges the “Project Americas” codename from Inside Gaming’s coverage is correct, as well as the claim about South America featuring as a setting. It also elaborated on the Vice City setting, stating that the game will take place not just in the fictionalized Florida city, but also Liberty City, the fictionalized NYC at the heart of GTA 4, with a stretch of smaller towns and swamplands between the two cities on the game map.
This vibes with something Benzies stated in that Digital Trends interview mentioned earlier, “[…] at some point we would like to have one big world containing all our cities and let the player fly between them and revisit their favorite areas,” though we should restate that this interview was from 2012 and Benzies is no longer at the company.
Rumor: GTA 6 will be set in multiple eras
The same Pastebin leak from 2019 claimed that the story for GTA 6 will be set in the ’70s or ’80s, but that several environmental assets are also modern day, speculating about either a campaign set across two eras or a separate GTA Online mode set in modern day.
It’s not set in the 1980’s and is modern. https://t.co/iav46Ty35V
— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) April 12, 2021