Rockstar Games reportedly once considered making a sequel to GTA 3 called Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo but ultimately decided to stick with the franchise’s familiar cities like Vice City and San Andreas. Of course, the game would’ve likely taken players to Tokyo, Japan for more crime drama. Depending on who you ask, it was probably a wiser decision to stick with the aforementioned iconic fictional cities.
The report comes from TimeExtension who asked a former anonymous Rockstar Games employee about the references to GTA Tokyo that were unearthed by dataminers following 2023’s leak of GTA 5‘s source code. The source claimed that Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser was indeed considering using Tokyo as a setting for a future Grand Theft Auto game after spending time in the city during the marketing for GTA 3. Obviously, this never materialised but it was apparently being strongly considered at one point.
TimeExtension’s source elaborated:
“He had just released GTA 3 back then and they were doing a lot of travel to Tokyo back then to promote the game. It seemed like a cool, interesting city to do it in, but at the end of the day, it just came down to logistics. Getting the research team out there long enough to map the city and just the cultural satire in terms of what could possibly work in a fitting narrative way in that city. 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.”
Despite GTA missing the train on the Tokyo setting, other games have since stepped forward to tell compelling crime stories set in Japan. The Yakuza series is a good example, while Shenmue also adopted the setting well before GTA 3.
Rockstar Games is currently working on the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6, which will transport players back to Vice City – this time, largely recreating real-world Miami locations. It’s scheduled to launch sometime in fall 2025 for PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: TimeExtension
