Grand Theft Auto 6 is heading back to Vice City, and for Dan Houser, Rockstar's former lead writer and co-founder, the choice makes perfect sense. After two decades away from the Miami-inspired setting, the franchise is returning to its neon-soaked streets for good reason.
Houser recently explained on the Lex Fridman podcast why GTA keeps gravitating toward Miami, New York, and Los Angeles.
You know, there's a reason why GTA kept coming back to Miami, New York, Los Angeles. I think they're all very good for exactly what you laid out. You know, you could move it to any of those and it would work, you know? There's a melting pot aspect to LA. You know, there's glitz, glamour, underbelly, immigrants, you know, enormous wealth in all of them. I think those are what, I think, are really fun for any, not even just the GTA, but for anything where you want a kind of slice of life, almost like a sort of psychotic version of a Dickens book.
This tension creates exactly what GTA thrives on, what Houser describes as a psychotic version of a Dickens novel where different walks of life collide in messy, chaotic ways.
The 51-year-old writer, who shaped the franchise's tone through nearly every title up to GTA V, also addressed why we'll probably never see a full GTA game set in London or anywhere outside America.
I think for a full GTA game, we always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else. You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters. It just felt like the game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider's perspective. But that was so much about what the thing was that it wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere.
The whole thing works from what Dan Houser calls an outsider's perspective on American culture, and transplanting that elsewhere would lose something fundamental.
Vice City first appeared in 2002 on the PlayStation 2, introducing an entire generation to the franchise. Now, 24 years later, Rockstar Games has returned to the fictional city in Florida with all the wealth, the diversity, and the glamour mixed with grime.
Miami works for GTA because it offers everything the series needs in one package. It's a city where extremes meet, where the American dream and its underbelly coexist in ways that feel almost designed for satire. After all these years, Vice City remains the perfect playground for Rockstar's brand of chaos.
