There is no introduction required for this franchise and the hype surrounding its sequel, within a few hours Rockstar’s servers are bound to crash with a gazillion downloads of their newest trailer of their game, before their new trailer actually hits the block and the speculation of the game begins here is a preview of what can be “EXPECTED” from the next iteration of Grand theft auto, expected being the key word here.
The boards are filled with the probability of GTA being set in London, with a pseudo name but this speculation is kind of weak because Sony’s Getaway is already set in London and GTA being its direct competitor cannot be in the same setting, however what we can see is The Getaway being mocked in the game itself with pun filled posters, radio Crackle, and characters. I believe the root of this rumor lies in the fact that the names of all the 3 previous games (Liberty city, Vice City, San Andreas) have been taken from the cities in the original top down GTA game , which was followed by an expansion pack set in London in 1969 .
GTA: Europe, the game might be set as an amalgamation of major European cities (London, Paris, Rome, Berlin) like San Andreas was of California, San Francisco and Las Vegas, this setting is downplayed because of the online possibilities that the game is supposed to incorporate, the multiplayer aspect had already been tested in the previous game with 2 player games at specific points, to support online play the city or the setting needs to be compact, yet exciting.
GTA: Liberty city (New York) this sounds like a good city to place your bet on, even though Liberty city was inspired by New York, we did not get to see much of its influence directly in the game as compared to Vice city and San Andreas, so revisiting the city in authentic terms is an idea that cannot be ruled out using the name of Liberty City again, another aspect that might support this claim is the fact that the roman numeral “IV” used by Rockstar in promoting the game (remember GTA “III”).
GTA: Future well take the above idea of New York and set it in the near future… so it translates into Liberty City in the near future, this idea has the maximum scope for developers to implement really cool ideas, gameplay mechanics and world design look up the movie “Judge Dredd” to get a feel of a crime infested futuristic New York.
Most of the Grand Theft Auto series centers around American states, Rockstar North has based its games on America and its ridiculous pop culture, its previous games have also taken the crime rate and the economic status into account whilst choosing cities to work with, like the old saying goes if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, we might very well see another amalgamation of cities and states, likely probables include Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and Texas.
–Neelesh Mukherjee