Rockstar GamesGrand Theft Auto 6 is a game that we still don’t really know anything about. There have been plenty of leaks, speculation, and rumours over the years, but nobody really seems that sure about what exactly Rockstar Games is cooking up for its beloved crime-sim franchise.
I say this because it’s important to remember before we dive into this article, which details a massive supposed leak from Reddit user JackOLantern1982 regarding to what to expect from the next entry in the series.
Rockstar has made no official statement of any kind on GTA 6 yet, so I’d recommend you take everything that follows with a massive pinch of salt.
With that said, there’s no shame in getting excited about these supposed details, because they make GTA 6 sound like the biggest game in the franchise yet. Not surprising, given Rockstar’s commitment to going bigger and better with every new game.
JackOLantern1982 claims to have had this insider information relayed to him by friends who’ve worked at places like Kotaku and PC Gamer, as well as a friend who works at Rockstar Games, who apparently will neither confirm nor deny what JackOLantern1982 has learned.
I’d usually write this off as the equivalent of “my uncle works at Nintendo”, but GamesRadar has pointed out that a lot of what JackOLantern1982 posted lines up with a number of other GTA 6 leaks – one of which was allegedly shared by someone on Fireden who’s “involved with the audio/recording process” of the game.
There’s a lot to go through in this leak, so I’ll try and break down the biggest stuff for you first. The game’s codename is apparently PROJECT AMERICAS, and will be a next-gen only title (which lines up with what the majority of leaks have claimed), and it’s been in development since 2012, though production reportedly didn’t start in earnest until 2015.
Rockstar GamesGTA 6, the leak claims, is going to be set partly in Vice City, and will tell its story across multiple decades (1970-1980) as it deals with the rise of a drug cartel in Brazil. In addition to Vice City, we’ll get to explore a fictional location based on Rio de Janeiro. Again, this lines up with a previous leak from Reddit user gfk53.
Some missions will apparently take place in Liberty City (the main location of GTA 3 and 4), which tracks with what the alleged Fireden leaker suggested, although JackOLantern1982 says these missions will be linear, and won’t let you explore open world style.
GTA 6 apparently won’t be quite as realistic as Red Dead Redemption 2 was, and will attempt to balance arcade elements, just as the series always has done. There’s only one playable protagonist, and it won’t be female, which is at odds with earlier leaks that claimed there’d be at least one female playable character.
The game’s main character (and the chap we’ll be playing as) is apparently an up-and-coming drug lord-wannabe named “Ricardo”, who starts off as a grunt doing runs as a cocaine smuggler from Vice City to the new large South American area before making connections and rising through the ranks. The story is apparently “heavily inspired” by Netflix’s Narcos, which tells a similar tale.
NetflixRockstar apparently want an “incredible” 70s/80s soundtrack, and as the eras change, buildings and vehicles will change to reflect the passage of time, meaning cars you picked up the 70s will be rarer/more valuable in the 80s.
The leak goes on to suggest that you can only carry a realistic amount of weapons with you at any time, with the majority of your arsenal being stored away in the trunk of your assigned car, in a similar fashion to the horses in Red Dead Redemption 2.
Finally, JackOLantern1982 says that GTA 6 will be tackling a number of weighty topics in its story, including HIV and the immigration crisis of the time. JackOLantern1982 doesn’t claim to know a release date, and suggests the game is still in pre-alpha, but the Fireden leak posits a 2022/2023 release window.
Rockstar GamesAs I said before – and I can’t stress this enough – we will have to wait until we get an official announcement from Rockstar to see if there’s any truth to these claims. For now, you can go over everything JackOLantern1982 said here, and decide for yourself just how much of it is true. I hope all of it, because it sounds awesome.
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.