The Grand Theft Auto games have always been synonymous with America; Americana is baked into the crime series’ very being. Across its history, there’s only ever been one GTA game set outside America: the London-based expansion of the original game.
GTA 6 follows this template, parodying the American state of Florida and the city of Miami. But what about the next game – will the series always be in America? Not necessarily.
In an interview with The Guardian, Rockstar North co-studio boss Rob Nelson propped the proverbial door open a sliver by saying: “Never say never.” He then quickly followed that comment with: “But there’s still so much to do in America”.
This is a topic Rockstar has responded to before, most notably when company co-founder and long-time GTA writer Dan Houser – who’s no longer at Rockstar – discussed why the series always seemed to return to America. He said it was because cities like Miami and New York and Los Angeles are places where extreme juxtapositions exist. They’re places where extreme wealth rubs shoulders with extreme poverty, and where organised crime can be found.
There’s also something America infamously has that few other countries do, and that’s free availability of guns, which is such a core tenet of a GTA experience.
Nevertheless, Obbe Vermeij – a former technical director at Rockstar North – revealed last year that a GTA: Tokyo almost happened. However, it wasn’t going to be made by Rockstar but rather an external team in Japan.
While discussing the subject, Vermeij referred to America as “basically the epicenter of Western culture”. “Everybody knows the cities, even people who haven’t been there,” Vermeij said. “They have a mental image of the cities. I’m afraid we’re stuck in this loop of about five American cities. Let’s just get used to it.”
GTA 6 is just days away from its 19th November release on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Rockstar recently clarified the game runs at 30FPS across all platforms and confirmed that while it’s available through Xbox Cloud Gaming, it cannot be streamed to PCs or non-Xbox devices.