The GTA 6 leak of last year was one of mammoth proportions that teased a catalog of footage and screens from an in-development build of Rockstar's next open-world crime simulator. Ignore the GTA 6 leak, the full Rockstar reveal will be worth the wait, is what I said at the time, and, for the most part, I stand by that. It's just that the wait in question feels long.
So long, in fact, that I've momentarily given up on official info drops in the real world, and am instead seeking very unofficial answers from the spiritual plain – from a psychic reading inspired by tarot cards and clairvoyance, as I seek more details on a GTA 6 release date. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and all that.
Advice city
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Let's dial things back a little bit. On February 4, 2022, Rockstar officially confirmed that GTA 6 was in active development. The announcement, tucked away at the foot of an otherwise run-of-the-mill Grand Theft Auto Community Update (this one pertaining to the then upcoming PS5 and Xbox Series X GTA 5 launches), wasn't much – but it was something. By this stage, would-be players had been pining for even a morsel of information regarding the developer's next steps for years, beyond the interminable flow of water cooler rumors that've stalked every game in the enduring series since its inception in the '90s.
So what do we know about the status of Grand Theft Auto 6 presently? We cover the most pertinent angles in our everything we know about GTA 6 rundown, but perhaps the two biggest details to be gleaned from the aforementioned leak were the confirmation of a female protagonist, and the fact the next game appears to unfold in Vice City. Unlike GTA 5, GTA 6 appears to have just two protagonists – the leaked footage showed two interchangeable characters, named Jason and Lucia, in a setting whose railway network was branded 'Vice City Metro', and whose Miami-aping locations reflected the original GTA: Vice City's Malibu Club, Ocean View Hotel, Little Haiti, and Vice Beach.
As a means of asking about a GTA 6 release date, I frame all of this by telling my psychic that my friends and I are planning a trip to a place named Vice City, which is just like Miami. I say we currently have no definite timeline on when we're traveling, and as such I'd like to ask the spiritual world when it thinks we might hope to go. I say that three of us visited a place like LA for the first time nearly 10 years ago, and we're somehow still talking about it today; and I say that I also visited a city like New York back in 2008 and had great fun.
"Well, you know, in the spirit world, there is no timing, so I can't really give you an exact timing," the psychic says. "What I am picking up, though, is that it feels like one of your friends may be a little bit confused about the planning of this. One minute, they really do want to go; but the next, it looks like there's something else going on with them, that might be distracting them. And even if you don't know who it is I'm talking about right now, it might be that it will come to light as time goes by. There might even be a point where you might wonder whether it will just be two of you, rather than three of you."
An interesting observation here, given the fact that the GTA 6 leak contained just two playable characters against its forerunner's three. Given Rockstar has offered so little in the way of concrete information at this juncture too, the mention of confusion with regards to planning likewise makes sense.
The psychic continues: "So in terms of timing, I'm not getting the clear indication spiritually, but I'm not so sure if it will actually even be this year. I feel as if the planning of it could take another year, or at least within the next 18 months."
At the time of writing, 18 months from now lands us in October 2024. We've already heard much internet chatter that GTA 6 will release in 2025, but there are also a few rumors that suggest GTA 6 could indeed launch in 2024. This Bloomberg article posits "current and former Rockstar staff reckon GTA 6 is still at least two years away from release, suggesting a 2024 launch." And this timeline appeared to be backed up in a Microsoft response to the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into its ongoing acquisition of Activision Blizzard. In that, Microsoft wrote the following: "The highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI is expected to be released in 2024."
So far, it seems like the psychic is pretty on the money!
Medium settings
"In terms of the planning to go away, to travel to your Vice City, it could be within the next 18 months. But I just couldn't see it actually happening this year".
My second question is vague, asking if the spiritual world can tell me what we might expect to happen on this proposed journey to Vice City.
"What I noticed is that on this particular trip, you may find or discover that you all are going through a change in directions," the psychic says. "And I don't know if it's one or two or three of you, but it just feels like there's a lot of weighing up to be done about the paths that lie ahead for you all. This particular trip could make you feel like making big changes that will have a big impact. It doesn't mean that you won't get to do this again, it just means that situations will sometimes make it feel like life is getting in the way, so to speak. I do believe all of you have met previously in another life."
Returning characters from previous Grand Theft Auto games to feature in GTA 6, then? Maybe. Am I clutching at straws now? Was I ever not?
The psychic concludes: "It doesn't surprise me that you all have done trips in the past, and that you've all had an important connection with each other. I don't think it was like what you have now in terms of how it is now, but you all played a part in each other's lives."
"In terms of the planning to go away, to travel to your Vice City, it could be within the next 18 months. But I just couldn't see it actually happening this year, or at least before the 18-month mark."
And so, I guess this is the spiritual world's way of telling us to watch this space.
Interestingly enough, there are only two known Psychic shops in the GTA universe – both of which are situated in Downtown Vice City; appearing first in the 2002 original game, and again its 2006 offshoot, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories.
Coincidence? Almost certainly, yes. Perhaps I should lay off the Los Santos LSD.
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