With Grand Theft Auto 6<\/em> nearly one month away, Rockstar is finally ready to talk about a game that has been wrapped in secrecy. A steady stream of interviews has told us more about how the game works, and more importantly, how it came to be. The latest example of that comes by way of Bloomberg, where reporter Jason Schreier visited Rockstar North\u2019s Scotland office and spoke to the team about its eight-year development journey.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But the juiciest detail in that report doesn\u2019t detail what GTA 6<\/em> is; it\u2019s what it isn\u2019t that stands out most. The original vision for the open-world game, as far back as 2015, would have players not exploring just one city but \u201cbig swaths of land across both North and South America.\u201d That project was codenamed \u201cProject Americas\u201d \u2014 and those two words might be enough to give you goosebumps if you were terminally online in 2020.<\/p>\n Before GTA 6<\/em> was properly revealed in 2023, fans were desperate for any information about the game. Perhaps fueled by COVID-induced boredom, 2020 and 2021 were a hotbed for rumors. Leaks became currency on sites like Reddit, where so-called insiders seemed to have a hot new detail every day. One week, it was that the game would feature seasonal map changes, a la Fortnite<\/em>. Next, it was that it would feature cryptocurrency. Every once and while, someone would chime in and claim Dr. Dre would be in the game. Some rumors sounded plausible, while others read like absurd fan fiction from people who were setting themselves up for a colossal disappointment.<\/p>\n The most ridiculous rumor? Project Americas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The rumor, which caught on like wildfire in 2020, was that GTA 6<\/em> was going to be set in multiple cities spread across America, bucking the established trend in the series of playing out in one city per game. Suddenly, supposed leakers came out of the woodwork to add fuel to the theory. We started seeing regular \u201cmap leaks,\u201d which suggested that the game would send players to Rockstar\u2019s take on Cuba. People began investigating domain registrations to figure out which cities the game would feature. For a good year, a large part of the internet believed that Project Americas was real.<\/p>\n As someone who was tasked with covering the GTA rumor mill at the time, it all sounded absurd. The obsessive way that fans were generating new rumors, which got exponentially more grand by the day, felt like a clear case of players telling each other what they wanted to hear. I felt vindicated when we got our first look at GTA 6<\/em> in 2023, which confirmed that the game would focus on one setting, Leonida. Finally, we could put years of imaginative rumors to bed. Vice City, here we come.<\/p>\n Well, egg on my face! Bloomberg\u2019s report confirms that the Project Americas rumors didn\u2019t come out of thin air. That actually was <\/em>the vision for the game at some point, though it\u2019s not clear when exactly those plans shifted. In detailing GTA 6<\/em>\u2019s arduous development cycle, the report notes that Rockstar had trouble nailing down a vision for the game, something that led to its two notorious delays.<\/p>\n The revelation has me looking back at the Reddit leak era in a new light. Maybe some of those leaks were <\/em>legitimate; if it felt like people were throwing rumors against the wall, perhaps it was because that\u2019s what Rockstar was doing at the time too. Maybe Dr. Dre was supposed to be involved with the game at some point, and that changed during a 15th direction pivot behind the scenes. Maybe he is <\/em>in the game, and we don\u2019t know it yet! (The cast revealed so far is pretty stacked.) I\u2019m certainly looking back at that old Cuba rumor today and wondering if GTA 6<\/em> will pull a Red Dead Redemption 2<\/em> and send you to an island for part of the story.<\/p>\n A weekly cheat sheet to what you\u2019ll eventually love to play. No buying, no \t\t\tSign up free\n What is Project Americas?
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