It’s been three years since Grand Theft Auto V came out and fans are itching for any information about the latest game in the series. While we haven't got any official confirmation that Grand Theft Auto VI has even entered development yet, I think it's safe to assume Rockstar has already got it covered, especially considering GTA V made $1 billion in just three days after release.
Grand Theft Auto V graced store shelves three years ago, and since then Rockstar's put a lot of effort into the online portion of the game, GTA Online, pumping out plenty of free content to keep it ticking over. While a new expansion is on the way, we may soon see GTA Online support start to dwindle as the Grand Theft Auto VI hype train rolls into town.
Release date
If the previous Grand Theft Auto release timeline is anything to go by, we should expect GTA VI to release sooner than you might think. With around 3 to 5 years between releases, it would be worth taking an educated guess that we are likely to see Grand Theft Auto 6 sometime in late 2017 or more likely in 2018.
Of course, if current rumours and internet rumblings are to be believed, it’s becoming ever more likely that we may see Red Dead Redemption 2 before the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, as we've heard more about Red Dead than we have about GTA.
What we know so far - Grand Theft Auto: London?
While Rockstar has yet to make any official announcements surrounding Grand Theft Auto VI, there have been some subtle hints that the game is in development. Thanks to an interview with the Guardian, we do know that it definitely won’t be set in London, much to the dismay of the Expert Reviews team.
"I think for us, my gut feeling is, GTA London was cool for the time, but games were more limited then," said Rockstar's Dan Houser. "These days I think we would love to set a game in the UK, set in London, whatever, but I don't know if it would be a GTA game. I think there are plenty of great stories we could tell about the UK, great environments to showcase, great gameplay mechanics that could have a UK bent to them – I just don't think it would be a GTA necessarily."
Houser also said that Rockstar's open to the possibility of a playable female protagonist too, which would be a first for the series. "We didn't really think about it this time [of GTA V]," he said. "That's not to say that we couldn't or we wouldn't. This character set is just what came to us: it wasn't, 'we've got X and Y so we need Z,' we weren't trying to do it off a checklist - I don't think that will ever give you something that's believable or engaging.
"In the future, could we do a game with a lead female character? Of course. We just haven't found the right game for it yet, but it's one of the things that we always think about. It didn't feel natural for this game but definitely for the right game in the future - with the right themes, it could be fantastic. But for GTA V, this was the organic thing that came up, these were the characters what would display the themes we wanted to think about."
With E3 2016 right around the corner and Rockstar rumoured to make a rare appearance, we might be getting more official info very soon. We'll update this article next week with more information as soon as it's announced.
Features we’d like to see
Los Angeles was the perfect choice of location for Grand Theft Auto V, but as is tradition with other games in the series, the next GTA will likely be in an entirely new location. While it would be nice to see another country other than the US get the GTA treatment, it’s likely Rockstar won’t play ball. After all, US locations have always been the perfect setting for Rockstar's satire.
We loved the three distinct playable characters in Grand Theft Auto V and would like to see this happen in the future, but perhaps they could expand on that, with the option to create your own character akin to the character creator in GTA Online.
We’d also expect Grand Theft Auto VI to be industry-leading in terms of visual fidelity and creating a believable world too. We all remember the first time we saw the announcement trailer for GTA 5 way back in October 2011 and were blown away by how good it looked, a feeling you may remember from Grand Theft Auto IV’s release back in 2008. Expect the same emotions when we see GTA VI for the first time.
