Earlier this week Take-Two announced that GTA VI, the first new release in Rockstar Games’ massively popular series of bloated crime epics in over 12 years, should be coming out in late 2025. This being Rockstar, and this being GTA, it’s a solid bet that it’ll be pushed again and not arrive until 2026. But right now GTA VI is probably coming out this year, it’s probably going to make $100 billion in like a day, it’s probably going to silence all the critics of videogames and make them agree that games aren’t just art but the best and most specialest art, and it’ll probably even make your Dad finally say he loves you. Given the way people talk about this game, anything less would probably be considered a failure. Once you get past all the industry hype and hyperbole, though, there’s only one simple request we have for GTA VI: please don’t be as goddamned embarrassing as these games have always been.
It would be cool if the biggest thing this medium makes wasn’t an unoriginal, juvenile, debilitatingly cynical cringe fest, but this is the world we live in. The GTA games’ most defining trademark is a kneejerk, witless nihilism, the tiresome attitude that absolutely everything is bullshit except for the people smart enough to realize that. It’s the kind of attitude you find in another cultural juggernaut created in the late ‘90s, South Park, and although the creators of that show and this game would probably reject any connection to political conservatism, you can draw a straight line from their worldview to the reactionary political environment currently dismantling the post-World War II world.
South Park has always been low-effort garbage, of course, but this is all especially galling with GTA games because they tend to be pretty great in other ways. No games have been better at creating lifelike cities to hang out in, or capturing the simple joy of listening to a great song while driving. GTA and its sister series, Red Dead Redemption, have the most consistently great acting in games. Even the dialogue, when it’s not trying to be funny or satirical and not relying too hard on crime movie references and cliches, is often more natural and human and nuanced than what you typically find in videogames. And although it’s almost always been used to prop up stereotypes and unoriginal pastiches of other pop culture, Rockstar has long displayed an awareness of how class and race define a person’s possibilities within society. GTA games are as disappointing as they are because they are so good in so many ways before collapsing under the weight of their too-cool, everything-sucks, let’s-blow-it-all-up attitude.
Obviously it doesn’t have to be that way. Rockstar has what it takes to create stories that are genuinely smart and insightful, and have created minutely detailed worlds in which to set them. It wouldn’t take much realignment for them to use the skills they’ve demonstrated to make a game that’s actually worthwhile. Of all the suggestions we’d like to make to Rockstar about GTA VI the big one is pretty simple: make it good this time. But let’s really break this down and get to specifics.
GTA games are supposed to be funny. They usually aren’t, but there’s no mistaking that that is Rockstar’s goal; these games are so desperate to be seen as funny that it’s actually a little sad, like when the world’s richest man shares lazy memes on his sewer of a social media site. It’s hard to see how the tiresome nihilism of its comedy could appeal to anybody who’s developed past middle school. Everybody knows about “punching up” and “punching down” in satire, and the problem with GTA is that it’s constantly punching in every direction. And just like how everybody who calls themselves an “equal opportunity offender” is just being an asshole, GTA’s all-purpose condescension is less funny than cruel. And it’s the cruelty of the bully, that sign of insecurity that makes it clear even the taunter realizes the real problem lies within themself and not their target. The first step to rehabbing GTA is fixing its comedy. Make it less overbearing, more focused, smarter, more incisive, and with consistent targets, instead of just smearing its smug mockery over all aspects of modern life.
It’s also time for GTA to look past the dude-bro film canon for its primary inspirations. No slight to Tarantino or Scorsese or Singleton, but even if the focus has to stay on crime (those initials do stand for something, after all) there are other cultural touchstones that can be mined. Instead of blatantly referencing Heat or Scarface or Menace II Society maybe try to tap into their general atmosphere and essence in otherwise original situations and contexts? Some of the more interesting parts of GTA games (particularly GTA IV) have tried to create their own crime fiction instead of paying obvious tribute to freshman dorm room posters. GTA V, though, was a hodgepodge of call-outs, a cathedral of pastiche, with three leads each from their own cookie cutter crime film. If Rockstar focused more on creating something with its own tone and aesthetic, instead of borrowing so much from other sources, GTA might actually feel inspired for once.
Something else along those lines: maybe try to be less hard boiled altogether? There’s always room for a taut, tight, tough crime book or noir flick, but that’s been GTA’s guiding inspiration from the very first game. (And there’s nothing about the always-bloated GTA games that could be called “taut” or “tight” anyway.) Crime touches all levels of society and all aspects of culture, and yet every GTA has approached it from a similar viewpoint. If it can set aside the standard trajectory of professional criminals, of hard men in hard times with predictable rises and falls, GTA VI wouldn’t feel as instantly dated as earlier games have. Having a playable female lead for the first time is a sign that GTA VI might be exploring new space within crime fiction, but everything else we’ve seen about the game tilts towards business as usual. Hopefully that’s not the case.
Obviously Rockstar doesn’t have to change a thing if it wants to continue making obscene amounts of money off of these games. Its formula has pulled a massive audience for almost 25 years now, despite how familiar it is, and despite the inherent immaturity of its perspective. And given the nature of hype, GTA VI could have not just the same tone as GTA V but the exact same story, beat-for-beat, tweaked only for its new characters and different setting, and still make literally billions of dollars within its first few days of release. (Honestly, the only thing that could potentially hurt GTA at this point is the shameless, grifting culture war bigots harping on about it “going woke” for having a woman co-lead—not because their arguments have any validity or resonate with anything other than a small sliver of the audience, but just because they make everything so goddamned exhausting that many people will be sick of hearing about GTA VI well before it ever comes out.)
If Rockstar cares about the quality of its games as much as their popularity—and anybody who puts as much thought and time into their work as Rockstar does with GTA’s technical aspects clearly does care about quality—it’ll grow past the voice that has defined the series so far. It’s well past time forGTA to grow up, at least a little bit. Given there’ll be at least as much of a gap between GTA V and GTA VI as there was between GTA V and GTA III (where the series as we know it essentially began), Rockstar has clearly had time to consider and update its approach; here’s to hoping they have.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, TV, travel, theme parks, wrestling, music, and more. You can also find him on Blue Sky.
