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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Before I’d learned to drive, or had even heard of cocaine, I was the premier drug kingpin of 1980s Miami. At the age of 12, playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, I experienced the electric thrill of total freedom. I carjacked a hot pink convertible and cruised down the boardwalk to the bubblegum pop of “Video Killed the Radio Star”. I’d survey the neon city and wonder: what would happen if I drove a motorbike off that rooftop? What if I became America’s Most Wanted and then escaped? The answer was always the same: chaos would ensue. It was glorious.
Now, 20 years later, after ricocheting between New York and California, Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto series is returning to Miami with GTA VI. There’s a lot riding on this release: GTA is a rare phenomenon that reaches far outside the gamerverse. Even people who have never touched a controller have heard of it. It has earned this stature for its cultural influence but also its economic heft: GTA V and its online component are the single most profitable entertainment product ever, generating more than $7.7bn to date. But in the decade since that last entry, the gaming landscape has shifted tectonically. Will a new game be able to match its success?
The first official trailer for GTA VI launched this week, announcing a release window of 2025. The game will be set in the state of Leonida, a fictionalised Florida. But while our last trip to Miami, renamed Vice City, was set in the sleazy 1980s, this will be a contemporary tale, underlined by the trailer’s references to social media and police bodycam footage. With Rockstar’s signature cinematic literacy, we are introduced to protagonists Jason and Lucia, a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, and see Lucia graduate from parole hearing to daylight robbery, set to the pumping rock of Tom Petty’s “Love Is a Long Road”.
While some were drawn to GTA V’s single-player story, the game’s mammoth success was largely due to its online component, which allowed players to people its fantastic world with their own communities and pay regularly for new things to do there. Rockstar helped define a change in how games are made and sold that was later adopted by the likes of Fortnite. As a result, GTA V is still in the top 10 most-played games on PC today, a decade after release. Though not yet announced, it’s a safe bet that GTA VI will also lean heavily into online multiplayer.
Following accusations of unethical labour practises, a new, kinder work culture has reportedly been established at Rockstar, and the series’ trademark satire is set to be more culturally sensitive to marginalised groups. The tone is still essentially pastiche, though — in the trailer we see an angry Karen wielding hammers in a sundress, a naked guy chased through a gas station by cops and a billboard for antidepressants advertising “America’s Favorite Dissociative”.
Yet beneath the veneer of cynicism and the adolescent criminal power fantasies, the heart of GTA has always been its exceptional cities. The new game looks stunning, from gleaming ocean to art deco facades and neon lights bleeding into the night. There will be plenty to do, from gator wrangling to street racing, in a city filled with diverse people who respond to your behaviour, making the space feel lived-in. While so many open-world games have aped GTA’s large maps and varied activities, their environments tend to feel sterile and lifeless. None have ever rivalled the confidence of Rockstar’s tone of voice, that clear personality infusing every element.
So while the hype cycle for this new game is only just beginning, and may well be suffocating by this time next year, GTA VI is looking good. It knows exactly what to promise: a world where you’ll want to jump into a car, crank up the radio, and just drive, because there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.
