Just the other day, we had reported on the admiration Ned Luke had for Grand Theft Auto 6’s trailer, and his high hopes for one of its lead characters, Lucia. However, Ned knows about Lucia’s haters too, and he has some choice words for them.
For those who don’t remember or maybe even don’t know, Ned voiced Michael De Santa, one of the three protagonists of Grand Theft Auto 5. So if there’s anyone who has any qualification to decide if a Grand Theft Auto character, it would be someone who played such a character.
Of course, as we now know, Grand Theft Auto 6 is introducing a playable female character for the first time in a while: Lucia, who seems to have a star-crossed lover as an accomplice. What we know so far is that Lucia has already served time, and doesn’t seem hesitant to jump back into crime.
Now, some really hardcore fans may want to point out that the very first Grand Theft Auto actually also had playable female characters. The thing is, some gamers will say that this is more or less a technicality; the franchise is best known for its 3D titles that came after its very brief 2D era. Furthermore, those 3D Grand Theft Auto games were often criticized for sexist, even outright misogynist portrayals of female characters.
So we will concede that Lucia isn’t the first playable woman in the entire franchise. But we still have to point out that this is a definite first for the series, as it’s clear that this story will be very different from what they had told in prior games. That’s especially true now that Rockstar’s co-founder and main creative lead Dan Houser is gone, and has been for some time when they made this game.
Perhaps that is part of the reason that there are fans who are critical of Lucia, of the idea that a woman is playable at all, or that gamers would have to play the game from a woman’s perspective. As reported by Dexerto, this is what Ned had to say to Lucia’s haters:
“You get a lot of these clowns out here going, ‘Rockstar’s going woke, they’re caving into the wokeness of the world. First of all, there’s been other female protagonists in the past, but not in something as huge as this.”
So, as you can clearly see, not only did Ned clown on these fans for making these claims about Lucia, he’s pointed out the history that these fans didn’t know. To be fair, most Grand Theft Auto fans have never played the very first game and would have known either. In any case, those fans can consider that they were just educated on what Grand Theft Auto really is about.
