The Best GTA Game Rockstar Will Never Make
3. Post-War America - The Perfect Storm
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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