Unsurprisingly, the GTA series comes under constant fire from feminist groups for what's perceived to be inherent sexism throughout the games. This began most prominently with the ability to have sex with hookers, beat them to death and steal your money back in GTA III, as well as the inclusion of strip clubs in later games. Also, the lack of playable female characters ensures that few women in the GTA universe have much personal agency at all. GTA V did rectify this somewhat by allowing players to create female characters in GTA Online, but the online avatars are merely stock characters for the most part, and thoroughly lack the personality of, say, the three single-player protagonists, who are of course all male. Around the time of GTA V's release, Rockstar's co-founder Dan Houser addressed the controversy head-on, claiming that, "The concept of being masculine was so key to this story". Hopefully, however, there will be a place for a female protagonist of some kind in GTA VI, not merely for the sake of tokenism but because it'd provide an interesting twist on the series' formula, and might also calm down some of those knee-jerk reactions regarding the depiction of women in the franchise.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
