Rockstar Aiming To Launch GTA 6 With Multiple States, Including Liberty City

New evidence suggests that Rockstar Games may be going bigger than ever with Grand Theft Auto 6. The game will have parodies of several U.S. states right from the start, including a return to Liberty City. Rockstar has been very quiet, but visual clues, character lore, and decisions made behind the scenes are coming together to paint a clearer picture of how big GTA 6 is going to be.

Rockstar's made-up version of Florida, Leonida, is where GTA 6 will take place and where Vice City is located. But fans with sharp eyes have seen a license plate in the trailer that says "Gloriana" and looks a lot like Georgia's real license plate.

Because of this, some people think that a state like Georgia, which could be where the mountainous Mount Calaga National Park is located, will also be open to exploration. So what does this mean? GTA 6 might have state lines that let players run away or go from one region to another during missions or story arcs.

That's not all, though. Another blurry license plate in the trailer shows what looks like a third state that looks a lot like Arizona. This suggests a much bigger map. And that's before we even get to Liberty City, the made-up city based on New York that has been a big part of previous GTA games.

Rumors go back years, and reports from reliable sources like journalist Jason Schreier say that Rockstar's long-term plan for GTA 6 has been to treat it as an evolving platform and add new cities slowly after the game comes out. However, more and more evidence suggests that Liberty City might be accessible from the start, at least in part, through story missions or prologue flashbacks.

One of GTA 6's two main characters, Lucia, has a very important past that holds a big clue. Her character bio says she grew up in Liberty City and that her father taught her how to fight when she was very young. The idea is that players might start the game with a flashback scene that takes place in Liberty City, introduces the main character, and teaches her how to fight right away.

Another link to Liberty City can be seen in the fact that Lucia is called "Lou" in Trailer 2. This is the same nickname as Luis Lopez, the Dominican-American main character in GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony. It is also known that Luis and Lucia both took part in illegal cage fighting. Fans think that Lucia and Luis may be related, or at least that their families are linked, which would make her story even more rooted in Liberty City.

A new character named Ral Batista has been added and is said to be a major player in the game's heist operations. This has made people even more curious. Someone leaked a picture of him wearing a jacket that looks a lot like the one that Niko Bellic, the main character of GTA IV, wears. Both of them are from Liberty City. This could just be a coincidence, but Rockstar's history of hints points to the opposite.

This idea is also supported by Rockstar's past strategy for combining maps. The whole map from the first Red Dead Redemption was rebuilt and added to Red Dead Redemption 2. A part of GTA: San Andreas took place in Liberty City from GTA III, and the story of GTA V began in North Yankton, a snowy state that is not part of GTA III. It's become common for Rockstar to use old locations in new games, even if it's just for a mission or two.

Rockstar and Take-Two Interactive's harsh actions against fan-made mods are another strong piece of evidence. The company recently shut down the Liberty City Preservation Project and the Vice City Next Gen Edition, a Russian mod that brought Vice City to GTA IV's engine. The timing and focus of these takedowns strongly suggest that Rockstar is working on its own updated versions of these famous places, most likely as part of the release of GTA 6.

The most ambitious theory says that GTA IV could be reimagined as a full DLC within GTA 6's engine. However, even the people who first came up with that idea agree that it's probably too much to ask. The idea shows how far Rockstar could go with its next game, though.

The story of how Lucia got her start, the trailer references, Rockstar's map history, Ral Batista's visual callbacks, and Take-Two's mod takedowns make it increasingly difficult to ignore Liberty City's role in GTA 6. It's very likely that Liberty City will only be available in small parts when the game first comes out, but this will pave the way for a much bigger expansion in GTA Online.

If this is true, it would be a huge step forward for the series in terms of scope and ambition. It would combine the nostalgic appeal of old cities with a bright, interconnected future. GTA 6 might not just be a game; it might turn into a crime saga that takes place across continents.

As always, Rockstar hasn't confirmed any of this, but fans can look forward to more solid information in the months before the game comes out. There will still be a lot of talk until then, and Liberty City could be the biggest surprise.