We have some interesting behind the scenes stories about the stories for Grand Theft Auto 6.
As shared by Twitter account GTA 6 Countdown, a French language Medium post by a Rockstar fan named Fravily shared this story, citing his own source as a former Rockstar Magazine chief editor. They allegedly also leaked early details about the RAGE engine.
Grand Theft Auto 6 experienced several rewrites, with three drafts written by Dan Houser. The first draft dating back to 2014 was codenamed Project Americas, and went like this:
- A police crime plot worthy of a thriller that featured 3 protagonists: an old cop, his troubled son, and the right-hand man of Colombian drug lord
- The cop is principled but he gradually descends into organized crime in a desperate effort to protect his son, who is struggling with drug addiction
- The son, a devout Cuban-American trying to escape his addiction and the dangers of the drug trafficking world
- The drug lord’s right-hand man imports narcotics into the US through Vice City, with ambitions to build his own empire in North America
In 2016, Project Americas was thrown out, and they started on a new draft with this story:
- Less dark time with two protagonists, a female police officer and a drug smuggler’s right hand
- The female police officer is a daughter of a Vice City cop who was killed in the line of duty. She seeks personal revenge by infiltrating the local underworld and taking it down illegally while still serving as a cop
- The drug smuggler’s henchman is wild and unpredictable like Trevor from GTAV, who gradually climbs the ranks throughout the story
This draft was rejected in 2018. Dan’s third story took even less time before being rejected, and mainly had this change:
- The grieving female cop was replaced by an African-American man, a former soldier recently released from prison who falls into the criminal underworld
In 2019, Dan Houser takes an extended break, and eventually decides to leave Rockstar Games. In 2021, he founds a new studio named Absurd Ventures, which is where he is now. Dan’s brother Sam Houser wrote the 4th draft that would go on to be the story for Grand Theft Auto 6 as we know it now.
Truth be told, games going through several rewrites and reboots is normal for the industry, but it’s definitely interesting to place Grand Theft Auto 6’s development history using this rumor. It means, contrary to common perception, Rockstar Games was already working on this game shortly after Grand Theft Auto V.
After releasing the Windows version in 2015, Rockstar did not wait that long to start work in the sequel after all. This rumor suggests that Rockstar did not ‘get greedy’ over the overwhelming success of Grand Theft Auto Online. And that does make sense, but it seems more likely that Rockstar would have wanted to make a new Grand Theft Auto with an upgraded version of Grand Theft Auto Online on either the 8th or 9th console generations.
The real problem seems to be that Houser wasn’t able to work out through some creative doldrums, or possibly there was a clash between the creative direction for the franchise between him and other people at Rockstar Games. It may be that Take-Two management didn’t want to deal with another overly dark Grand Theft Auto that would be harder to sell beyond the franchise’s hardcore fanbase. Or Dan’s vision just wasn’t coming together, and he just needed to step away as he may have outgrown the franchise at this point.
In any case, Houser has spoken about not wanting his Absurd Ventures project to compete with Grand Theft Auto, so it doesn’t seem like there were personal issues behind this. Longtime fans of Rockstar may want to support both Grand Theft Auto 6 and Absurd Ventures, and that’s what Houser would want.
