The Golden Gate Bridge in GTA San Andreas
I know Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be good.
It’s Rockstar. They could make Grand Theft Auto: Bakersfield and I’d probably spend 200 hours stealing Altimas and doing side missions for a divorced orthodontist.
But I still think they picked the wrong city.
Vice City makes sense. Miami is loud, ridiculous, wealthy, horny and filled with people who look like they’ve committed at least one federal crime on a jet ski.
But modern-day San Francisco would’ve been better.
Not the San Fierro we got in San Andreas. I’m talking about right now. The San Francisco of Waymos, AI startups, fentanyl, billionaires, doom loops, sideshows, $4 million Victorians and people making $200,000 a year wondering if they can afford a second bedroom.
Modern San Francisco already feels like somebody modded GTA until the game became unstable.
Walk around the city for an hour and tell me you don't hear NPC dialogue.
Some guy in Patagonia is explaining his startup into AirPods while walking directly into traffic. Someone is screaming at a driverless car. A naked guy in the Castro is patiently waiting for the WALK signal. A dude in the Mission is selling mushrooms outside a restaurant where dinner costs $300.
Rockstar wouldn't even need writers.
Just send employees outside with notebooks.
The missions practically write themselves.
You start out boosting cars in Richmond. Eventually, some 26-year-old billionaire hires you as "Head of Physical Asset Redistribution" for a startup that is obviously just a car-theft ring with an app.
The company raises $600 million.
You get stock options.
The company collapses three missions later.
Your shares are worthless.
The CEO starts another company.
Mission passed.
Then there's the map.
Give us San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, Vallejo and Silicon Valley.
Let me steal a Hellcat in Oakland, take the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, escape through Chinatown, cross the Golden Gate and hide in Marin.
A five-star wanted level on the Bay Bridge at 5:15 p.m. would be the hardest mission Rockstar has ever created.
Silicon Valley alone could provide half the characters. Imagine infiltrating an AI conference at Moscone Center disguised as a startup founder despite knowing absolutely nothing about artificial intelligence. Every dialogue option is some combination of "scale," "disruption," "agentic" and "changing how humans interact with information."
Nobody notices.
You raise $14 million.
But the real reason San Francisco would work is that the Bay Area has become almost perfectly suited for the type of satire Grand Theft Auto does best.
This is one of the wealthiest regions on Earth, yet extreme wealth and visible desperation regularly occupy the same block.
That's Rockstar's entire artistic language.
GTA has always been about America eating itself. Everybody wants money. Everybody wants status. Everybody is selling something. The criminal and businessman are frequently doing the same thing, except one has a gun and the other has LinkedIn Premium.
A guy steals $40 worth of shit from Walgreens and gets arrested.
Three missions later, you help a CEO commit $800 million in securities fraud.
The CEO gets invited onto a podcast.
MISSION PASSED
Even stealing cars would be funny.
You smash the window, hotwire the vehicle and jump inside.
It's an electric car.
Two stars.
Nineteen percent battery.
Good luck.
Autonomous cars would randomly stop in intersections. Cybertrucks could have the structural integrity of refrigerators pushed down staircases. Every fictional tech company would promise to "MAKE HUMANITY BETTER™" before you discover they're selling your kidney measurements to the Department of Defense.
Miami might be the more obvious choice.
That's why San Francisco interests me more.
We've seen the Florida jokes: cocaine, alligators, influencers, boats, plastic surgery and Florida Man.
The Bay Area represents a newer kind of American insanity.
Artificial intelligence is being developed blocks away from tent encampments. Driverless cars cruise past people who can't afford apartments. Billionaires talk about colonizing Mars while BART occasionally smells like somebody shit inside a microwave.
It's utopia and dystopia occupying the same ZIP code.
Rockstar has spent decades creating fictional cities where technology, crime, inequality, drugs, money and delusional people collide in increasingly ridiculous ways.
Meanwhile, San Francisco spent the last 20 years becoming one.
