Grand Theft Auto 6 was already one of the most talked-about and leaked upcoming games, but reports have been positively flying since Rockstar Games officially acknowledged it. Another leak joins a slew of others, all from credible sources but with conflicting details.
Report: GTA 6 Will Include London
This report is in the form of a brief video from renowned industry analyst Michael Pachter, whose name should ring a bell if you’ve been following the industry at all recently. The analyst has covered the development and release of numerous large projects, and he frequently releases information and forecasts.
This latest report focuses on GTA 6, and it contains numerous alleged details about the game’s features and development. One interesting tidbit about the game’s development reveals just how long this has been a long-term project – according to Pachter, GTA 6 has been in development since 2014, with coding beginning in 2015.
If this is correct, it means that Rockstar Games took their sweet time officially acknowledging the title, but we still have a long way to go before anything more concrete materialises. According to Pachter, the project will take 10 years “or more” to complete, which means we won’t see a release date before 2024, if at all. Given how much would have to be constantly reworked as technology advanced over the last decade, and the proclivity for delays, that appears to be a generous prediction as well.
In contrast to previous developer statements that the next entry in the series will be a smaller, scaled-back release to help alleviate crunch – a pervasive issue in the AAA industry that notably left its mark on the development cycles of GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 – the report also indicates GTA 6 will be absolutely massive.
GTA 6’s size and scope will be mind-boggling, with a predicted playtime of 400-500 hours. Pachter claims that it will take place on multiple continents, with the player character allegedly trafficking drugs from Los Angeles to London via the port of Miami. Pachter most likely referred to Los Santos and Vice City as real-world locations.
This would not be London’s first appearance in the GTA series, though its previous appearance was in a 2D era spin-off title, and a lot has changed in the franchise since then. It’s possible that Rockstar would make a reference to or name-drop a real location, but it doesn’t seem to fit their current approach to set a game in London, even if only partially. Perhaps a renamed and fictionalised London?
While the inclusion of the port of Miami would absolve the report due to the prevalent and repeatedly touted leaks of GTA 6 taking place primarily in Vice City, many reputable sources previously mentioned flashback scenes set in Liberty City and made no mention of Los Santos, making the water a little muddy with this new information.
Leaks are simply a part of the reality of the video game hype trail, and no amount of effort from publishers can ever effectively limit them – however, GTA 6 is a very strange beast. Speculation, predictions, and various fake leaks about the sequel have been circulating the internet since GTA 5’s release, but legitimate-looking ones are relatively new. Having said that, there are multiple, contradictory leaks coming from various, reputable sources, all of whom have a strong track record of reporting legitimate information.
Being one of the most talked-about and leaked games out there actually works to GTA 6’s advantage when it comes to keeping things under wraps. One might even suspect that Rockstar Games was involved in disseminating legitimate-looking information to the right sources in order to create the current bizarre situation of competing leaks vying for attention.
Some of the information being circulated right now could be accurate – it could be Pachter’s report or one of the other leaks. Maybe they’re all telling the truth; maybe none of them are even close. It’s ironic that the fandom’s unprecedented and insatiable thirst for knowledge fuels this obscurity.
We’ll have to wait and see, which in the case of GTA 6 could mean years.
