Nostalgic Vice City Fans Should Prepare to Be Disappointed by GTA 6

Fans of the Grand Theft Auto franchise will finally return to Vice City when GTA 6 launches later this year, allowing them to see what has become of this Miami-inspired city since it was last playable. While there is still a lot left unknown about GTA 6, it’s been confirmed that the game will feature a setting within Vice City and the surrounding state of Leonida for players to explore. Some longtime fans may be excited to revisit all of their favorite Vice City hotspots to see what has become of the city since it was last seen in the series’ timeline, but they may want to prepare themselves for disappointment.

Vice City originally debuted as one of the three playable maps in the original Grand Theft Auto, but wouldn’t become playable in the 3D universe until the release of GTA: Vice City in 2002. With its Miami-inspired aesthetic, Vice City has a distinct personality that blends the beach party lifestyle with the drug and gang wars the series is known for. While these features are likely to remain in GTA 6‘s version of the city, the design of the map itself is likely to look completely different than what fans of Vice City remember.

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GTA 6 Likely Won’t Look Like the Vice City Fans of the Series Remember

The Grand Theft Auto series has three major locations that it tends to visit in each entry: Liberty City, Vice City, and Los Santos. These three cities represent the original locations present in the first GTA game and have been expanded upon with each subsequent appearance. As the series has evolved from the 2D universe to the 3D universe and finally, the HD universe, these cities have grown to look drastically different between the games they appear in, and the Vice City of GTA 6 will likely follow the same trend.

How Los Santos Changed Between GTA: San Andreas and GTA 5

Rodeo became Rockford Hills
Mulholland became Vinewood Hills
Santa Maria Beach became Del Perro
Verona Beach became Vespucci
Ganton became Davis
Jefferson became Rancho
Idlewood became Strawberry

In the jump from the 3D universe to the HD universe, Los Santos changed pretty dramatically, both in size and representation. The city of Los Santos itself in GTA 5 is nearly the size of the entirety of GTA: San Andreas‘s map, and that doesn’t include the other surrounding locations players can visit in GTA 5. Most notably, though, are the changes to some of the locations within Los Santos, such as the neighborhood of Ganton, where Grove Street and CJ’s home are located, becoming Davis in GTA 5.

How Liberty City Changed Between GTA 3 and GTA 4

Portland becomes Alderney
Staunton Island Becomes Algonquin
Shoreside Vale becomes Broker and Dukes
Bohan is added
The map is mirrored

Liberty City undergoes another fairly drastic set of changes between GTA 3 and GTA 4. Not only do specific neighborhoods get renamed, but the neighborhood of Bohan is also added, and the entire map of the city is basically mirrored between the 3D universe version and the HD universe version. These changes make Liberty City almost unrecognizable between these two games, further solidifying the inevitability of a drastic redesign for Vice City in GTA 6.

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Vice City Hasn’t Been Visited in the Series’s Timeline Since the 1980s

Aside from the fact that the maps of Grand Theft Auto‘s iconic cities have undergone numerous changes in the jump from the 3D universe to the HD universe, GTA has really only shown Vice City during its heyday in the 1980s. Both GTA: Vice City and Vice City Stories are set in the 80s, and the city only gets revisited in the timeline of the series in the original GTA‘s 1997 setting. As such, many of the iconic locations that were thriving in the 80s are likely defunct in 2026, and while there may still be some traces of the past, the city that players have grown to know will likely be something far different than the original Vice City in GTA 6.