GTA 6 will be the third game in GTA’s HD universe. Liberty City and Southern San Andreas (which I’ll just call Los Santos for convenience) are the latest and more detailed reimaginings of the same cities Rockstar has done twice before. With remastered textures and GTA 6’s cutting edge graphical tech, Liberty City and Los Santos would not seem out of place alongside GTA 6’s Vice City.
Rockstar has not confirmed any plans to combine all these maps into one world—but there are clues that they’re at least thinking about it.
Recent leaks revealed a scrapped GTA 5 DLC titled “LibertyV”. It is not known what this DLC would contain, but the use of the word Liberty obviously suggests a return to Liberty City.
The original codename for GTA 6 was “Project Americas”. This game was reportedly supposed to take place across the entirety of America. The idea proved too ambitious, which is why GTA 6 will focus on Vice City instead.
It is possible, though, that the idea for a multi-state world did not die with Project Americas. Creating the entirety of America from scratch with Rockstar’s usual level of detail would be too much to handle. Remastering their previous maps would be more doable.
Rockstar has remastered old maps before. Red Dead Redemption 2 features the Western Border States of Red Dead Redemption 1. Only the Mexican third of the map is missing. Could the success of this remaster be a prelude to their remastering of Liberty City and Los Santos in 6?
As I write, the full map of GTA 6 is not yet known. One interesting mystery lies in the north of the map. There is no confirmation that the north of the map ends with a coastline or a land connection. If there really is land north of Leonida, this could potentially connect with Liberty City to the northeast and Los Santos to the northwest—kickstarting an ever-evolving map of the United States which expands with each new game/DLC.
Even if GTA 6’s story doesn’t involve Liberty City or Los Santos, it is more likely GTA Online will. GTA Online is its own separate game—as indicated by the fact it is not called ‘GTA V Online’. Considering how closely tied GTA Online is with Los Santos, it would be a risky business decision to outright replace it with Vice City. Such a move would erase everyone’s properties and their ability to place all the Los Santos based missions.
Rockstar could separate GTA Online into 2 separate modes: V Online and VI Online. But this would fragment the playerbase and miss out on a golden opportunity.
The smarter business move would be to expand GTA Online to include both maps—Vice City and a remastered Los Santos. And if they do that, why not include Liberty City? Then GTA Online would truly be the definitive online experience—even if the economy, community, and gameplay loop still suck.
The inclusion of all three islands would enable Rockstar to sell properties in all three locations. It would also be a lot of fun to explore remastered versions of these old maps to see how they have changed over the years. Is the Mile High Club finally finished? Have Rockstar finally decided to populate the rural areas of San Andreas with trees as originally intended? Did Roman’s taxi business prove a big success or has the depot been replaced by a Cluckin’ Bell?
It’s interesting to think about. Let’s hope Rockstar thinks so too.