Grand Theft Auto 6 will have a female lead, according to sources from Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier. It would be the first time that the GTA franchise will have a female lead character.
The character is said to be of Latin American descent and part of a duo inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, according to Bloomberg. From this it can be concluded that the other character is a man. This is in contrast to previous parts of the franchise, in which one or more men were always given the lead.
According to Schreier’s sources, this new take on the Grand Theft Auto franchise has to do with an overall shift in the work culture within Rockstar Games. Once upon a time, there would have been a ‘macho culture’ at the company, often involving ‘drinking and fighting’. Excursions to strip clubs are also said to have been organised. This corporate culture, coupled with extreme working hours and high expectations, which is termed a crunch in the industry, sparked a protest from hundreds of employees in 2018. In 2010, the company was already discredited because of the same internal problems.
Rockstar is said to have come around in the meantime, including through the inclusion of a female lead character in GTA 6. The new corporate culture would also be apparent from the fact that a still unannounced mode for GTA Online would have been deleted. In the ‘police and crook’ mode, players would mimic the child’s play, but due to ongoing controversies surrounding police brutality, the company is said to have decided not to release the mode.
Developers, according to the sources, will henceforth be careful not to ‘knock down’; jokes about vulnerable or otherwise discriminated groups should no longer be tolerated. This would be a turning point for the franchise as Grand Theft Auto has evolved over the decades into a satirical open world franchise full of jokes about all kinds of ethnicities, political affiliations and beliefs. Rockstar already removed it earlier transphobic content from the GTA V remasters.
Little is officially known about Grand Theft Auto 6, aside from the fact that Rockstar Games is working on it. According to Schreier and Battlefield leaker Tom Henderson, the game will not be released until 2024 at the earliest, partly because Rockstar takes the well-being of its employees more into account.
Previous installments within the GTA franchise only featured female side characters