Report: ‘GTA 6’ Cut Four Leads Down To Two, Three Cities Down To One

Games Report: ‘GTA 6’ Cut Four Leads Down To Two, Three Cities Down To One Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. New! Follow this author to improve your content experience.

Got it! Jul 29, 2022, 10:13am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin GTA 5 Rockstar Today, there’s a bit more GTA 6 news that sheds some light on this week’s report that revealed some of the first details about the game, even if Rockstar itself isn’t sharing anything yet. This comes from ex-Kotaku journalists Stephen Totilo and Jason Schreier, now reporting for Axios and Bloomberg respectively. This week, Schreier reported that GTA 6 was attempting to reduce its scope in order to force less crunch on Rockstar employees, and had cut out larger North and South American map zones to instead focus on just Vice City.

And it would have two protagonists, including a Latina woman, half of a Bonnie and Clyde-style duo. But additional reporting from Axios reinforces just how much of a slimdown this actually was. According to Totillo’s newsletter , the original plan was for there to be four leads in GTA 6 this time around, one more than GTA 5 had, and a departure from every game before that which had only one playable character.

That was cut down to two. It seems likely the current two were part of the original four, but that’s not said explicitly. GTA Vice City Rockstar The other bit is that there were supposed be three major cities in GTA 6, but that has since been trimmed down to just one, Vice City.

No word on what the other cities were, but past reports indicate that at least one of them may have been a fictionalized city set outside of the US entirely, which would have been a first for the series. MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry This isn’t to say we will never see that content. Part of the Bloomberg report was that Rockstar’s current plan is to add more missions and cities over time, raising questions about the potential “live” nature of GTA 6, which may not just be a GTA Online component, but also affect its single player content too.

I’m not sure if the game would add more protagonists over time as well, which seems less likely, but we’ll see. I personally would rather see efforts focused on one city and its surrounding areas rather than have the game delayed further, launch in a rougher state or totally burn out Rockstar. I also have never really understood the desire to have multiple playable leads in these games, as few games in this genre do this, and I don’t find it adds all that much value.

Three in GTA 5 was almost overkill, so four sounds like it almost certainly could have been. Two sounds a lot more manageable. What none of this reporting indicates is a firm date for any of this.

Some rumors suggested that late 2023/early 2024 was the target, but further reporting indicates that Rockstar does not have that window in mind specifically, and the real answer is likely 2024 or beyond. As ever, GTA Online continues to print money, which has led to there being no real urgency to get GTA 6 out. Anyway, it seems like we will mostly keep hearing about the game through insider sources for a while, and it may be a while yet before Rockstar decides to even officially start teasing it at all.

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