If there’s one game that will surely dominate the gaming landscape in 2025, it’s Grand Theft Auto 6. This upcoming title from Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive is the first new installment in the GTA franchise in over ten years. The last entry, Grand Theft Auto 5, sold over 200 million copies in its lifetime, so anticipation for GTA 6 is unsurprisingly quite high. In fact, when Grand Theft Auto 6 was first announced in December 2023, its reveal trailer amassed a whopping 93 million views on Rockstar’s official YouTube channel just 12 hours after it went live, making it one of the fastest-viewed videos in YT history. Given the incredible attention the title is getting more than a year before its release, it seems safe to say that GTA 6 is poised to have one of the most successful and influential game launches of all time.
Just because it’s generating so much excitement, it doesn’t mean Grand Theft Auto 6 will live up to everyone’s lofty expectations. Indeed, there are some aspects of the game that may limit player freedom. For example, from the footage shown in the GTA 6 reveal trailer, the crime-committing dual protagonists, Lucia and Jason, appear to be in a Bonnie and Clyde-style romantic relationship with each other. While romance has had a presence in previous titles in the series, this looks like the first time that the plot of a Grand Theft Auto game will be centered around the budding love between two lead characters. Although this change to the series’ protagonist formula is certainly interesting, Lucia and Jason’s romantic relationship likely indicates that dating other NPCs won’t be a prominent feature in GTA 6.
The Romance Between GTA 6’s Dual Protagonists Could Suggest that Dating Won’t Be in the Game
Dating Has Been a Notable Feature in Previous GTA Games
Though early GTA titles did feature minor romance subplots, the 2004 PS2 game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was the first entry in the series to incorporate dating as an actual gameplay mechanic. GTA: SA‘s protagonist, the pragmatic gangster Carl ‘CJ’ Johnson, had six potential girlfriends he could choose from. Although two of the girlfriends in the game, Millie Perkins and Denise Robinson, could only be unlocked after completing certain story missions in San Andreas‘s main campaign, the rest of Carl’s possible partners could be dated regardless of story progression.
The ability to date girlfriends made its return in the next two mainline entries in the Grand Theft Auto series, GTA 4 and GTA 5. In GTA 4, there were five different women that the game’s protagonist, Niko Bellic, could date, three of which could only be met on the internet in-game. GTA 5, on the other hand, took a more stripped-down approach to the dating mechanic from previous Grand Theft Auto installments. While players could hook up with certain characters in the game, they were unable to take them out on dates, like in San Andreas or GTA 4.
GTA 6 Lacking a Dating Mechanic Would Be Disappointing, But a Well-Written Romance Could Make Up for It
Since Jason and Lucia are already in a romantic relationship with each other, there’s a good chance that Grand Theft Auto‘s trademark dating gameplay feature doesn’t return at all in Grand Theft Auto 6. Unless GTA 6‘s protagonists break up sometime during the course of the main storyline or one of them outright dies early on in the game, it seems likely that the game won’t provide players with any romance options.
After the success of recent titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, both of which featured extensive dating mechanics, being unable to romance NPCs in GTA 6 will probably disappoint some. That being said, if Rockstar is able to execute the romance between Grand Theft Auto 6‘s protagonists well, then perhaps the absence of this feature won’t matter much in the long run.
