GTA Could’ve Been Set In Various Other Cities, But Rockstar Decided Against It

Speaking to Time Extension, an anonymous source has talked about interesting potential possibilities that the GTA franchise left itself out from approaching back in the day. To give you a bit of backstory on this, though, it all started in 2012 when Take-Two Interactive — Rockstar’s parent company — registered patents for numerous GTA names, including Tokyo, Bogota, and Sin City.

This led to speculation that perhaps the publisher is looking toward GTA games based on these cities. While such titles never actually came out, the unnamed source in question confirms that the Tokyo setting was once seriously considered for the continuation of the Grand Theft Auto franchise. 

Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo was one of the cities being considered at the time. Sam was pretty caught up with the Tokyo scene. He had just released GTA III back then and they were doing a lot of travel to Tokyo back then to promote the game. It seemed like a cool, interesting city to do it in, but at the end of the day, it just came down to logistics.

Getting the research team out there long enough to map the city and just the cultural satire in terms of what could possibly work in a fitting narrative way in that city. Making those things connect was a little tough and we thought it was just cooler to stick with the cities that were introduced in Grand Theft Auto 1.” 

As for the other names in the patents, those merely served the purpose of protection against domain squatters. “Around that era, the internet was a different place. Much like domains, you would file it just to keep squatters away from it,” says Time Extension’s source. 

The Next GTA Game Goes Back To Vice City 

With all eyes set on what is going to shake up the industry with its release, GTA 6 is targeting a 2025 release window, though I genuinely hope it actually comes out within this time frame. And as far as its setting is concerned, the title is seemingly based in Vice City, an iconic location that GTA fans are no stranger to. 

On a side note, Take-Two has a wild line-up for next year and it’s not just GTA 6 that you should look forward to. Let me know what you think about all these other titles coming out in 2025 in the comments ahead.