Background
Vice City Before GTA 6
This is the third Grand Theft Auto set in Vice City, and the first in twenty years. What came before is worth knowing — not least because it explains what Rockstar is choosing not to repeat.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002)
Released on PlayStation 2 on 29 October 2002 in North America and 8 November in Europe, with Windows and Xbox versions following in 2003. It was the direct successor to Grand Theft Auto III and one of the defining games of its generation.
| Set in | 1986 |
|---|---|
| Protagonist | Tommy Vercetti, voiced by Ray Liotta |
| Based on | Miami, Florida |
| Influences | Scarface (1983), Carlito's Way (1993) and Miami Vice (1984–89), which the development team watched throughout production |
Rockstar's own description of the research trip has aged well: Miami as “a party town, all sun and sea and sex, but with that same dark edge underneath”. The game drew directly on the city's Cuban and Haitian communities, its biker gangs, the mid-eighties crack epidemic, and the glam metal of the period.
Two things it did that mattered for the series: it gave the protagonist a voice and a name rather than a silent avatar, and it made the radio — seven stations of period music — as much a part of the experience as the missions.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006)
A prequel, released on PlayStation Portable on 31 October 2006 in North America, with a PlayStation 2 port in March 2007. Set in 1984, two years before the original, with Victor Vance as protagonist — an ex-soldier pulled into the city's criminal economy after a dishonourable discharge.
It is the least-played of the Vice City games for the obvious reason that it launched on a handheld, and it is the one most likely to be forgotten in any discussion of what Rockstar has done with this setting before.
What GTA 6 is doing differently
Three departures, and all three are confirmed rather than inferred:
- The present day instead of the eighties. Rob Nelson has described the game as a time capsule of 2026. The previous two were period pieces about a decade Rockstar had already lived through.
- A state, not a city. Leonida contains Vice City rather than being it. Rockstar has named six other locations, and the map is described as roughly twice GTA V's.
- Two protagonists, one of them a woman. Vercetti and Vance were both solitary male leads in the mould of the crime films the games were built from.
The continuity question
Rockstar has said nothing about whether this Vice City is the same Vice City. Not a word, in either direction, since the December 2023 announcement.
The series has a long-standing habit of rebuilding its settings from scratch rather than continuing them. Liberty City in GTA III and Liberty City in GTA IV are recognisably the same idea and not the same place, and characters do not carry across. San Andreas has been done twice on the same basis.
On that pattern, Leonida's Vice City would be a new version of the idea rather than a continuation of Tommy Vercetti's city. That is a reasonable expectation. It is not a confirmed one, and you will find plenty of pages that state it as though it were.
The one data point Rockstar has given is small and cuts the other way slightly: Lucia's official biography mentions her mother's past in Liberty City. That is a shared name across games, which proves nothing about shared continuity but does indicate Rockstar is not pretending its other cities never existed.
- No word
Whether GTA VI shares a continuity with Vice City (2002) or is a fresh version of the setting.
No Rockstar statement - No word
Whether Tommy Vercetti, Victor Vance or any earlier character is referenced.
No Rockstar statement - Confirmed
Liberty City is mentioned in Lucia's official biography as part of her mother's past.
rockstargames.com/VI/only-in-leonida
Why the twenty-year gap matters
Between Vice City Stories and Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto V and two Red Dead Redemption games. The studio that is building Leonida is not the studio that built Vice City, and the technical and narrative distance is enormous.
It also means most people playing this in November have no memory of the earlier games at all. A game released in 2002 is further from 2026 than the 1986 setting of Vice City was from its own release date.
Related
Sources
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City — for release dates, setting and development influences.
- Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories — for release dates and setting.
- Only in Leonida — Rockstar Games.
Every factual claim above is labelled as confirmed or unconfirmed and traced to the source listed here. Where Rockstar has said nothing, this page says so rather than filling the gap.