Grand Theft Auto VI: does the world really need another sequel?

When I was in my first year of high school, rumours swirled around the playground about a video game where you could see people naked. Outrage and intrigue flooded the hallways: it was 2005, and for a group of 12-year-old Catholic school kids, nothing could be more scandalous than the idea of a video game where people had sex. Until that point, our Gameboys and PlayStations were for catching Pokemon and locking Lara Croft’s butler in the walk-in fridge. The ‘Hot Coffee’ controversy around Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – in which particularly dedicated fans of the franchise restored a cut mini-game which allowed them to have semi-graphic sex with player character CJ’s girlfriend – blew our tiny, religion-conditioned minds. 

The first Grand Theft Auto game I played was GTA V. Released in 2013, it was a cultural behemoth. By then, the franchise was already one of the most successful – and infamous – in gaming history, but GTA V took things up a notch: in its first 24 hours on sale, the game made a reported $800 million – it surpassed the billion-dollar mark in less than three days. But as well as breaking commercial records, GTA V was a critical smash too, earning perfect scores from various review outlets including Edge, IGN and GamesRadar+. 

The moment I was hooked is still permanently etched in my mind: it’s when retired crime boss Michael – a blatant but charming Tony Soprano rip-off voiced by Ned Luke – and rookie gangster Franklin (voiced by Shawn Fonteno) enact some street justice on the tennis coach Michael’s wife is having an affair with. Using nothing but a tow truck, a winch and pure unbridled rage, they pull the cliffside house he’s hiding in down by its support beams. This wild moment of retribution is the catalyst for the game’s plot, as Michael makes some powerful enemies with his little hissy fit, and recruits Franklin to help him make some quick cash. But the demolition stunt also brings him to the attention of former colleague Trevor (Steven Ogg, putting in the unhinged performance of a lifetime), a sordid psychopath living in a squalid trailer who thought Michael died nine years earlier in a bank heist gone wrong.

This clear nod to Lethal Weapon 2 might have passed some players by, but developer Rockstar has developed a reputation for their cinematic approach to video game storytelling. Paying tribute to the likes of Michael Mann’s Heat, The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, and prestige American television series Breaking Bad and The Wire, GTA V is a pop culture obsessive’s dream, rewarding the inner brain goblin that makes us retain lines of dialogue from Miami Vice and The Simpsons but not useful information, like our national security number or how to change a fuse. 

As of April 2023, the game had made $7.7 billion for Rockstar, a figure that’s bound to have increased since. Most remarkably, the franchise continues to be a money spinner, shifting a cool five million copies over the summer of 2023 alone. Somehow, nine years after its release, with no significant content added to the base game and with 190 million copies already sold, people are still flocking to GTA V. 

A large part of this continued popularity comes from the wild success of GTA Online, an MMORPG offshoot that requires a copy of the base game to play. Similarly, the game’s active and ambitious modding community has taken the game’s ‘sandbox’ concept to heart and created around 50,000 modifications which grant players everything, from more realistic weather to the ability to play as a literal giraffe. This high level of custom content has turned GTA Online into a giant unruly playground and given birth to a thriving streaming community, with the top 5 GTA V streamers on Twitch racking up a mammoth 17 million viewing hours in the past month alone – stats Netflix would kill for.

If you want to get rich quickly in GTA Online and buy yourself that sick ‘Imponte Ruiner 2000’ ride or the surprisingly costly astronaut outfit you’ve had your eye on, you can trade your real-life cash for some virtual dough via a ‘Shark Card’. While micro-transactions (or not so micro, if you’re dropping £60 to buy yourself a virtual helicopter) are nothing new, Rockstar – and their parent company Take-Two – has turned it into an art form that rakes in around half a billion dollars per year.

The continued profitability of GTA V is perhaps why Rockstar has dragged their heels on developing a sequel. Rumours surrounding GTA VI date back as far as 2016, although it wasn’t until early 2022 that fans had a real reason to get excited about what the studio was planning when a leak of work-in-progress gameplay (allegedly the result of a hack from a UK teenager) was uploaded online. Rockstar has since shared the first trailer of the game, giving fans an official glimpse at what is likely the most-anticipated video game sequel of all time.

But is there still a place for the bloody, often deeply misogynistic, anti-sex work and transphobic worldview perpetuated by GTA in 2023? We’re post-GamerGate, post-MeToo, and yet women are still struggling to be seen or heard within the games industry. Violence against women and transgender people continues to dominate global headlines. It doesn’t feel like the gaming world has necessarily become a more accepting place – at least at the AAA level. 

The trailer for GTA VI showcased the franchise’s first fully playable female protagonist since the original Grand Theft Auto. Meanwhile, Rockstar has allegedly made positive shifts to clean up its “frat-boy” corporate culture. Still, it’s hard to imagine what a version of GTA that isn’t a cis male power fantasy might look like. Growing up playing video games, I expected them to have some level of misogyny or homophobia baked into them. But a decade after GTA’s release, the video game world is more diverse and exciting than ever, and as much as I love the Looney Tunes-esque hijinks of Michael and company, I’ve played plenty of games without the scummy sentiments.

But even with its outdated views on gender and sex work, there is value in GTA V. In 2017 a private school in Toronto used the game to teach male students about class, misogyny and privilege, while the still lively GTA Online community have found creative ways to tell their own stories and find community (though furries, so often the internet’s punching bags, still face pushback from less tolerant players). That a nine-year-old game continues to not only retain fans but attract new ones indicates there’s something about it that still connects, whether it’s the masterful storytelling, online character-building, or just the opportunity to wreak mayhem in a controlled environment. 

I’m approaching GTA VI with cautious optimism. Rockstar’s last full game, Red Dead Redemption II, won me over with the story of bad, sad cowboy Arthur Morgan, and while GTA has always been a little lighter in tone, both share the ambitious scope and immersive storytelling that draws me into a game. I want a world I can get lost in, with flawed but compelling protagonists. Most of all, I’m still chasing that feeling I used to get as a kid when I heard about these video games: that thrill of something boundary-pushing and a little bit ridiculous (though we can skip the sex simulation minigame and rampant misogyny this time around). That’s something that only Grand Theft Auto can provide. 

Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled for release in 2025

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