Who cares about GTA VI anymore, if Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo could have been…

The Grand Theft Auto series goes hand in hand with America and the satire it inspires. But at one time, Rockstar Games considered changing the location to Tokyo. This fresh info comes from an unnamed source who is said to have worked at Rockstar Games at the time of the third game.

The person spoke to TimeExtension about the possible spin-off after a massive GTA VI leak found files that hinted at the game. The former employee, who cannot be named due to Rockstar Games’ rigorous confidentiality obligations, said that there was once talk of bringing GTA to Japan.

When the source spoke about co-founder Sam Houser, he said: “He had just released GTA 3 back then and they were doing a lot of travel to Tokyo back then to promote the game.” The source continues: “It seemed like a cool, interesting city to do it in, but at the end of the day, it just came down to logistics.” Logistics included sending a team to Tokyo to map the city and research cultural differences.

Of course, a significant part of GTA’s success stems from the aforementioned satire, which would have been much more difficult to transfer to a game set in Japan.

The source says: “Making those things connect was a little tough and we thought it was just cooler to stick with the cities that were introduced in Grand Theft Auto 1.”

This seems like a perfectly logical move, but it doesn’t stop us from lamenting what could have been great…

When the news broke on Reddit, one user wrote: “I took it as we were robbed from getting a Yakuza game from Rockstar.”

However, since SEGA runs the Yakuza franchise, it’s also likely that Rockstar didn’t want to compete with them, as they perfectly hit the mix of Japanese crime, culture and humour.

Source: TimeExtension, Reddit