The Best GTA Game Rockstar Will Never Make

by Ewan Paterson

1. Is Nostalgia For Vice City Driving The Next GTA?

GTA vice city
Rockstar

This is where things start to get a little bit messy. You see, while I'm still very much looking forward to whatever Rockstar have planned next, no matter the setting, if the rumours are true that we're going back to Vice City in and around the 1970s/80s, I am a little concerned that it'll be driven primarily by nostalgia.

The nostalgia pendulum swings every two or three decades, and so you'll have probably noticed that the eighties and nineties are very in vogue currently - more so the latter than ever before. There's also a general level of nostalgia for games released on the sixth generation of consoles as of late, with remasters and remakes growing in frequency with every year.

In regards to GTA specifically, it seems as though every year fans beg Rockstar to conjure something to do with Vice City, the series' stand-in for Miami that captivated imaginations in 2002. With that in mind, rumours that the next game will head back to Vice City shouldn't be all that surprising, especially when you consider how Rockstar already returned to Liberty City and Los Santos in GTA IV and V in 2008 and 2013 respectively.

The issue here isn't so much that I don't think Rockstar have genuine cause to revisit Vice City, or even that they won't be able to do anything interesting with it - in fact it's quite the opposite. It's more just that it feels like the most predictable move they could make right now, taking into account current nostalgic trends and the yearly demands from fans to head back to the eighties and rekindle memories of Tommy Vercetti, Lance Vance, and the old Pegassi Infernus.

And look, I get it. I really do! Watching Don Johnson in re-runs of Miami Vice sets off that urge to jump back into Vice City all over again, and I have no doubt that Rockstar could make another great GTA game set in that era. I just think it's time for something new, in the vein of L.A. Noire or Red Dead, that delves into a relatively untapped era of US history - at least when it comes to video games.

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What setting do you want to see the next Grand Theft Auto use? Let us know in the comments below!

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Content Producer/Presenter

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.