GTA 6 Setting Debate: Vice City or Las Venturas, Which City Fits the Next Game?

As of late March 2021, Rockstar Games has not said where Grand Theft Auto 6 will take place. That hasn't stopped the rumor mill from settling on an answer. Nearly all of the speculation points to Vice City, and a Screen Rant opinion piece by gaming editor Christopher J. Teuton asks whether another city from the series, Las Venturas, might be just as good a choice.

The two cities come from different games. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas gave players three cities, Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas, along with the countryside of Red County and a desert holding secret government bases and out-of-the-way airfields. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City had one city, the title location, plus a lot of water for boat races and missions built around boats or helicopters. Even so, a quick look at the GTA 6 rumors turns up Vice City content far more often than anything else.

Teuton starts with the case for Las Venturas, which is modeled on Las Vegas, Nevada. It would pose a design question the 3D-era games haven't had to answer: is a perfectly flat landscape fun to drive around in? Even Grand Theft Auto III, the first 3D entry, had steep areas such as Shoreside Vale. Teuton thinks current-generation technology could still make a flat desert interesting to explore.

He sees more upside in heists. San Andreas had a casino heist that took a whole string of preparation missions, and he argues that a modern version, built on the heist systems Rockstar already made for GTA Online and Grand Theft Auto 5, would be very enjoyable. The desert around the city could hold wildlife like that in the New Austin region of Red Dead Redemption 2. He lists off-road drag races and body burial as possible additions, and adds that there would probably be plenty of Breaking Bad references.

Gambling would be central, he writes, and Rockstar would have to blend features from the GTA Online Diamond Casino and Resort with Red Dead Redemption 2's gambling to make good minigames. Mafia groups would likely matter too. If the rumors of a 1960s or 1970s setting are right, families like the Leones or the Forellis could return.

Then comes the case against, and it is the one Teuton ends up favoring. Casinos, heists and deserts are all things players already know from GTA 5 and GTA Online, and fans have been exploring San Andreas's deserts for over seven years. Vice City, in its original form, is a group of islands surrounded by water with no sandy desert in sight, which makes it the sharpest break from that environment.

He also points to what Vice City has in beaches, which could bring back San Andreas's rarely used DDR-style dancing minigames for beach parties. A return would also let Rockstar continue, or precede, the story of Tommy Vercetti, who has barely been mentioned since taking over Vice City's drug trade. Teuton thinks many longtime fans want to know what became of his empire.

On casinos, Teuton notes that real Florida doesn't allow the kind seen in Las Venturas, but says Rockstar could simply change the law in its fictional version. He grants that a map of mostly empty water would be no better than empty desert, but he believes the developers have shown they can create emergent gameplay that makes dull terrain interesting. His conclusion is that most of Las Venturas's best features already exist in recent games, so Vice City makes more sense.

This is opinion, not reporting, and nothing here is confirmed. The thing to watch is Rockstar's official reveal, whenever it comes, and whether it points toward the water-heavy variety of Vice City or the familiar formula of Las Venturas.