Should Grand Theft Auto 6 Return to San Francisco?

Grand Theft Auto in the Paris of the West — sounds kind of nice. (Tyler Casey, Wikimedia)

BY DAVID COPPIN LANEGAN

David Coppin Lanegan (@willybillybilliam, @wavesons.band) is a writer and musician. Find his SubStack Jawbone here, and his band Wavesons’ music here. 

Everyone’s favorite ATM-robbing, civilian-shooting, car-crashing, coke-snorting game franchise is getting a new installment. Grand Theft Auto 6 was officially announced in early 2022 after years of speculation, Rockstar games recently confirmed that a GTA 6 trailer will release early in December. Hype is massive.

According to GameRant, many fans think GTA 6 will be set in Vice City, the game’s in-universe equivalent of Miami. But, nothing is set in stone. So, let’s imagine for a moment, a Grand Theft Auto that returns to the city of San Fierro, first seen in GTA: San Andreas.

The previous iteration of Rockstar’s flagship franchise, GTA 5, came out in 2013, quickly becoming massively popular. It is the second best-selling video game in history, and earned a billion dollars in it’s first three days on the market, according to Polygon. Shortly after its release, according to Develop, development for GTA 6 began. There’s no reason to think game makers weren’t already plotting about getting the Bay involved.

A one-to-one correlation between locations is common in GTA 5, which is set in Los Santos, the in-game equivalent of Los Angeles. For example, Venice Beach in LA and Vespucci Beach in Los Santos. So picture speeding across the Golden Gate Bridge in an absurdly expensive, ridiculously colored sports car. In San Fierro, the GGB is called the Gant Bridge.

Other iconic San Francisco locations could be parodied and parroted to great effect. A bank robbery mission where you launch straight, or crookedly, down Lombard Street, called WIndy Windy Windy Windy street in GTA: San Andreas, in your getaway vehicle, dollar bills flying behind you. Perhaps an outing where your character travels to an old, odd bookstore, in the vein of City Lights, to meet a criminal contact. Surely, given the GTA series’s crude sense of humor, some scene would take part at a Coit Tower stand-in, which has not yet been seen, nodding to Lillie Hitcock Coit’s phallic tower that invokes the fiery passion of a firefighter’s hose — so to speak. 

Everyone knows what Coit Tower looks like, right?

Another SF asset GTA 6 could lean on is the Bay’s rich music history. GTA 5 famously included an in-game radio, available when driving, tha included stations playing many different genres of music. Additionally, musicians would regularly record talking pieces or skits that were played on these radio stations This was massively popular, and will surely return in GTA 6. Now, imagine a Bay Area giant like Larry June shooting the breeze while you cruise around in GTA. Sounds great doesn’t it? Even older SF musicians like E-40 or MC Hammer could be convinced to make an appearance, or at least lend their tunes.

While a Miami setting does seem to be in the bag for GTA 6, it is great fun to hope and dream for a glorious return to San Fierro. You really never know — Rockstar could be faking us out. And even then, there’s always GTA 7. We may just have to wait another decade or so to (digitally) rob the Bank of San Francisco.