Rockstar Games briefly considered giving GTA 6 four playable protagonists before ultimately deciding to focus the story on Jason and Lucia.
GTA 6 will follow the two characters as they navigate Vice City and the wider state of Leonida, marking a change from GTA 5’s three-protagonist setup. While Rockstar eventually settled on two leads, the studio explored whether its next game should go even bigger.
The idea came as Rockstar considered how to follow GTA 5, which introduced the ability to switch between Michael, Franklin, and Trevor throughout its story.
Rockstar considered four protagonists for GTA 6
Speaking to IGN during a visit to Rockstar North, co-studio head Rob Nelson revealed that four playable characters were among the ideas discussed during GTA 6’s development.
“As the narrative unfolds, we’re quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character,” Nelson said.
“After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of – do we do more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now? But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each and therefore player connection with those characters. So we decided to step in this direction of two characters in a relationship.”
Rockstar GamesRather than increasing the number of playable leads, Rockstar chose to build GTA 6 around Jason and Lucia and their relationship, allowing players to spend more time with each character.
That decision also created another challenge for the development team, with Nelson explaining that Rockstar wanted players to become invested in both characters individually and as a couple.
“But then the question became: how do you make players feel like, ‘I love them both?’ Chemistry is a notoriously hard thing to do in any sort of entertainment. Either the characters and the actors that embody them have it – or they don’t.”
“Everyone involved worked at that pretty hard. I think we’ve got it. I think we’ve got enough reaction within our team internally to where they feel great as individuals and together.”
GTA 6 is currently scheduled to launch on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19, 2026.
I’m Abhishek Sharma, an author at TigerJek.com. I enjoy exploring games, testing different strategies, and turning what I learn into clear, useful guides. My goal is to help players understand the game better and improve without the usual confusion.
