One Classic GTA Setting Needs a Second Chance Sooner Rather Than Later

Highlights

• GTA 6 will transport players back to Vice City, promising a more expansive and detailed landscape leveraging modern hardware.
• Rockstar should consider revisiting Anywhere City from GTA 2, offering a unique setting with potential for a modern adaptation.
• A theoretical GTA set in Anywhere City could blend small town USA satire with cyberpunk elements, offering a fresh take on the franchise.

The hype train for the next Grand Theft Auto is reaching an interminable speed as fans await GTA 6‘s release in 2025. GTA 6 will take players back to Vice City, the Miami-inspired metropolis once characterized by neon lights, white suits, and lavish drug-dealer lifestyles. It will certainly be interesting to see how Rockstar builds upon Vice City, leveraging modern hardware to create a more in-depth and expansive landscape, similar to how GTA 5 iterated upon the Los Santos that players first saw in GTA San Andreas.

One of the most exciting parts of modern Grand Theft Auto games is the contemporary renditions of classic locations from the series. GTA 4 showed players an HD version of Liberty City, for instance, which first appeared in 1997’s Grand Theft Auto. It’s worth wondering, then, why one classic setting hasn’t made its return to the franchise, especially given its unique and promising premise. When Rockstar finishes GTA 6 and looks toward the franchise’s new horizons, it should consider taking a swing at this once-iconic city, punching it up for a modern audience.

Grand Theft Auto Ought to Return to GTA 2’s Anywhere City

Anywhere City Has a Great Deal of Potential for a Modern GTA Adaptation

Released in 1999, Grand Theft Auto 2 is the first and only appearance of Anywhere City. Like the first Grand Theft Auto two years prior, GTA 2 assumes a top-down perspective, allowing players free access to the entirety of its decently sized world, though with notably less attention to detail than any of Rockstar’s modern titles. As such, Anywhere City is a setting with some fun ideas, but shackled by the hardware and genre conventions of its era.

As its name suggests, Anywhere City is something of an amalgamation of several real US cities, taking a markedly different approach from the direct real-world parody inherent in other GTA settings. Set in 2013, GTA 2 takes on a quasi-futuristic aesthetic, with concept art for the game gesturing toward an even more overt cyberpunk theme. This melting pot of influences, both real and fictional, make Anywhere City a strong candidate for Rockstar’s most interesting setting, and it’s about time that it got the contemporary treatment.

There Are a Few Different Paths a Theoretical ‘GTA: Anywhere City’ Could Take

The prospect of a cyberpunk-style GTA game may seem tantalizing to many fans, especially those interested in seeing a more fantastical take on Rockstar’s influential open-world formula. Indeed, this would be an exciting and unexpected route to take, but it also runs the risk of adulterating Grand Theft Auto‘s more grounded, satirical identity. Luckily, Rockstar could take a lot of creative license here, as GTA 2‘s comparatively barebones approach to world design leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

Since Anywhere City is meant to be a combination of many US cities, a modern game using it as a backdrop could lean into the ‘Anytown, USA’ concept that many Americans are no doubt familiar with. There’s a notion that countless smaller towns in middle America lack a distinct identity or culture, characterized by strip malls, chain retailers, and urban sprawl. Drawing from this element of the zeitgeist, Rockstar could use its satirical powers to create a biting criticism of featureless, bland US cities—a refreshing approach after the faux glamor of Los Santos and Vice City.

At the same time, a new GTA game set in Anywhere City could realize GTA 2‘s vision of a stylized megalopolis akin to the cities of Akira or Batman Beyond. It would be a tough balance to strike, certainly, but the early promise of Anywhere City as an apocalyptic, crime-ridden town that is emblematic of the entire US instead of a single city, could present a bevy of design and narrative opportunities in a future GTA title.