Last week Rockstar sent gamers absolutely feral when it dropped the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, albeit a little earlier than planned. It was 90 seconds chock-full of prime GTA vibes—we were given a great look at a modern-day Vice City, a whole host of real Florida Man behaviour, and a first peep of Lucia, one of potentially two protagonists we'll be able to play as, and sort of the first playable woman in the series' 25-year history.
I say sort of because, if we want to get real nitpicky about it, Lucia isn't technically GTA's first female protagonist. That crown goes to Katie, Mikki, Ulrika, and Divine from the original Grand Theft Auto. Granted, all eight of the game's avatars speak the same male-gendered text dialogue, and in the first GTA's top-down perspective, they all look near-identical in their garish yellow shirts.
There's also the multiplayer mode in the older console versions of San Andreas where the second player can play as… a sex worker. Then, of course, there's GTA Online's nameless mute protagonist, if you choose to make them a woman.
But in the debut trailer, Rockstar strongly signalled that Lucia is the studio's first fleshed out, fully realised female protagonist to cause chaos among its caricatured Americana. She takes precedence over potential co-protagonist Jason in the trailer—she's the one to kick open the convenience store doors at the end of the trailer, the one who takes charge walking through the aisles and the one holding the money in the car as Jason acts as the getaway driver. While the game is looking to be a Bonnie & Clyde situation with the two, the trailer makes it feel like it's very much Lucia's story.
That debt of female-focused storytelling Rockstar accumulated over decades makes Lucia's journey all the more important.
