For as long as anyone can remember, Grand Theft Auto games have had a laser sharp focus on one single location for their open world. The fictional locations of Vice City, San Andreas and Liberty City have all been brought to life time and again with successive releases, with each of the franchise’s games picking one single city or state and then focusing on it and it alone. However, with the massive growth and expansion that open world game design has seen in the last few years, maybe Grand Theft Auto should expand its horizons- in every sense of the phrase.
When Rockstar finally comes out with the inevitable Grand Theft Auto 6, what they should do is, rather than having one single location to focus on, maybe they should have multiple explorable cities. To be fair, they already did that to some extent with GTA 5. They covered the entire state of San Andreas, and given how large the map was, they were able to include all kinds of geographical variations and urban and sub-urban locations in the game.
But when GTA 6 rolls around, how excellent would it be if we got to visit, say, both Vice City and Liberty City in one single game? Games such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Assassin’s Creed Origins have showed us in the recent past just how massive open world games can truly be, and if GTA follows suit, maybe this dream could turn into a reality.
Once again, it’s not as if Rockstar have never done something similar before. GTA 5 was, as I’ve already mentioned, a ridiculously large game, and though technically it was set only in San Andreas, it had a lot of variety in terms of its world design. Having GTA VI in the future that lets you visit multiple iconic locations isn’t such a far-fetched idea, and we’re hoping that’s exactly what Rockstar have in store for us.
This article is part of our series on Rockstar’s next big entry into the world of Grand Theft Auto. Through this series we take a look at the possible new features that Rockstar can add into the next GTA game, based on what they implemented in the previous entries and player feedback.