Undoubtedly one of the most successful video game titles to hit the market, the latest installment of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) will not be rolling out until 2018 as Rockstar Games, the game developer behind the gangster video game, remains silent on the status of its development and release date.
To date, there is little information about the release date of GTA 6, the highly-anticipated next iteration of the GTA franchise.
According to MNR Daily, Rockstar Games usually take five years to release a new installment to the GTA series. Since GTA 5 was released in 2013, industry insiders are betting that Rockstar will be releasing GTA 6 sometime in 2018.
However, there have been persistent reports that Rockstar might announce a surprise in 2017 and release GTA 6 in 2017. So far, rumors have also been circulating that husband and wife Ryan Gosling and Eva Mendes will be lending their voices in the next series.
Also whetting the appetite of the millions of GTA fans is the speculation that a female lead character will be introduced in GTA 6.
Lead GTA developer Dan Houser was quoted in 2013 that the coders behind the video game have been thinking of the possibility of adding a female lead character in their video game. He said, "In the future, could we do a game with a lead female character? Of course, we just haven't found the right game for it yet, but it's one of the things we always think about."
Reports have also indicated that the new GTA 6 will feature a very large map, probably including a whole state. Tipster and Reddit user, VermillionDemonFox, earlier hinted that the upcoming GTA 6 have all GTA maps combined into one consistent world map. The leak added that San Andreas is going to be seen in the southwest are and Las Venturas will be in San Andreas territory, and San Fiero will be taking the place of San Francisco near north of San Andreas.
However, back in October 2013, Rockstar president Leslie Benzies told Develop that they are actually looking into bringing GTA 6 location to London come to its release date.
"For this one, we were down in London and the idea of the three characters popped up again," Benzies said. "We'd actually considered it for 'San Andreas' because there were three cities, but it didn't work from a tech point of view because the three characters need three times as much memory, three types of animation, and so on."
Adding, "We throw stuff in the pot, and the good stuff stays and the bad stuff disappears - there are a lot of gatekeepers at the studio, who ensure not much of the chaff makes it through. Some of the good ideas, like the three characters, stick around."
Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes to Lend Their Voices
A report News Every Day further flamed rumors that a new female lead character will be introduced in GTA 6 as Eva Mendes is reported to have agreed to lend her voice, together with husband Ryan Gosling. However, nobody at Rockstar has confirmed these rumors.
With all these rumors circulating about, GTA 6 still may be a long shot. 2018 is an intelligent target date for the game and even then, the certainty of it still kept at bay until mentioned otherwise.
