The Best GTA Game Rockstar Will Never Make

3. Post-War America - The Perfect Storm

Lucasfilm

But why the 1950s and '60s? What exactly about that era would lend itself to a Rockstar title? Well for starters there's the clash of imagery. There's a general misconception that the US post-WWII and pre-JFK's assassination was a land of diners, drive-ins and youthful innocence, a perception no doubt exacerbated by the immense economic growth the country underwent following the war.

While it's true that a great many Americans became more prosperous, the reality is far more complex. The Red Scare, spurred on by the US' burgeoning conflict with the other super-power of the time, the U.S.S.R., engendered a culture of political persecution and wild anti-communist hysteria. Black servicemen returned home from overseas only to be met with de facto and de jure segregation and a resurgent Ku Klux Klan, and the women's liberation movement was still a decade away from becoming a genuine force.

And therein lies the central appeal of America's long 1960s for storytellers. The outward facing impression of the era is one so at odds with historical reality that it enables creatives opportunities to confront it again and again. Stories like The Graduate and later Blue Velvet both tackle the tragedy and then horror that the suburbs ostensibly masked, while Coppola's Godfather helped enshrine the notion that such unfettered growth was entwined with criminality.

This in mind, it wouldn't be difficult to envision a version of GTA grappling with both of these themes, along with the other political crises of the time. Hangar 13's Mafia III offers the perfect blueprint in this regard, with the game depicting the story of one Lincoln Clay, a black Vietnam veteran who finds himself out for revenge in 1968 - one of the most tumultuous years in modern US history - all the while dealing with systemic racism in the deep south. Mafia's attention to detail is peerless in that regard, and something Rockstar could learn from with their future efforts regardless of their setting.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.