DESPERATE for the next Grand Theft Auto game? There’s plenty in the way of news and rumours to get excited about.
We’ve tracked down all the latest official info, leaks, hearsay and speculation on GTA 6 – while we all wait patiently for the release date.
Grand Theft Auto 6 – what is it?
Grand Theft Auto 6 is the rumoured followup to GTA V, which has sold more than 90million copies and made an estimated £5billion since its 2013 release.
Creator Rockstar Games has yet to acknowledge it’s making another GTA game, but it’s safe to assume one is in the works.
The game largely remains a mystery, but details are steadily trickling out ahead of the big reveal.
Grand Theft Auto 6 release date – when is GTA 6 out?
Rockstar hasn’t officially confirmed a GTA 6 release date, but that doesn’t mean it’s not coming in 2020.
It was widely rumoured (and now is almost certain) that GTA 6 will launch on the new consoles: the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.
But that doesn’t tell us much, as both consoles are already out – and will likely remain dominant for the next five to 10 years.
As far as any upcoming announcements go, we won’t know anything concrete until Rockstar discloses more info.
Grand Theft Auto 6 news and rumours – storyline, characters and map
In May this year, details about GTA 6 allegedly surfaced online.
A purported former employee of Rockstar leaked apparent info about the game, including the names of the main characters.
In it, the anonymous poster claimed the hotly-anticipated game’s map will mirror the one in GTA San Andreas, with three major cities and one smaller town.
However, it will apparently be larger than the maps of both Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA:V) and Rockstar cowboy shooter Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2) combined.
Players will follow four main characters through the game’s story mode, the poster said.
They include a driver called Walther Wallace, a man named Thomas Branigan with a smuggling plane called “the Raven” and a drug dealer named Marcus Burke.
An unnamed former Israeli IDF agenct was also mentioned in the post.
Missions in the game allegedly won’t be as linear as in GTA:V or RDR2.
Gun mechanics and the the hand-to-hand combat system will be more like RDR2’s, the poster claimed.
Apparently, the game will be set in the 1980s but will later jump to modern times – an unusual narrative choice for the franchise.
According to a lengthy post on Reddit the new game is code-named Project Americas, and has been in development in some form since 2012, a year before GTA 5 launched.
It’s been on-and-off since then, the post says, first picking up properly in 2015 before being put on ice while all of Rockstar’s global studios focused on the final details of Red Dead Redemption 2.
GTA 6 will reportedly only have one main playable character, a wannabe drug lord called Ricardo.
Starting in Vice City, the game will also feature action in a new South American city, and some story content that takes you to Liberty City too.
The game’s story will be spread out over several years too, with areas in-game changing as the years go by, according to the leak.
Going along with that is a new system to build up and manage your own drug-dealing empire that will draw inspiration from PS2 series entry Vice City Stories as well the business systems found in GTA Online but “dial it up to 10”.
The weapon system will draw from RDR2 and previous Rockstar game Max Payne, with the player only able to use weapons you can carry “on your person”.
However, to help with this you’ll be able to store things in the trunk of your car, where you’ll be able to tweak your loadout.
The way the story is told, its look and its characters are all heavily inspired by Narcos, the Netflix drama about Pablo Escobar.
Escobar got his start in the drugs trade in the mid 70s, rising to prominence throughout the 1980s, becoming a folk hero and one of the world’s richest men.
Negotiations are ongoing, the leak says, into securing all the music you’d expect for a GTA game set in the period.
It was recently claimed that a sequel to 2006 game Bully (dubbed Bully 2) was cancelled due to Rockstar focusing on GTA 6.
In other news, Trending In The News’s favourite alternative to a games console is the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset.
Grab a VR headset and you’ll be able to play the legendary Beat Saber – like Guitar Hero, but with lightsabers.
And Dell’s Alienware R10 Ryzen Edition is a gaming PC powerhouse that crushes both the new consoles.
What would you like to see from GTA 6? Let us know in the comments!
