In GTA 6, Florida Will Write The Jokes Itself
Since its inception, Grand Theft Auto has always built itself on humour. In the 2D days that was the simple, darkly funny premise of mowing down pedestrians – the stuff that fuelled Carmageddon’s popularity and notoriety. In the years since, the jokes have become more sophisticated, building into a blunt satire of the United States of America.
It’s been over a decade since Grand Theft Auto 5, though, and the cultural landscape of the US has shifted considerably during that period. The 2016 election seemed the runway for a spiral of increasingly absurd changes, encompassing everything from capitalist greed to pandemic mismanagement and a literal political insurrection. In 2018, Rockstar co-founder and GTA’s former head writer Dan Houser said, “Some of the stuff you see is straightforwardly beyond satire.” So, in the 2020s, how do you satirise America? The answer suggested by GTA 6’s trailer is that you simply hold up a mirror.
For this next-generation rendition of Vice City – an analogue of Miami, Florida – it appears that Rockstar is replicating reality in its most direct manner yet. Multiple sequences in the trailer are near enough exact recreations of real viral Floridian stories. The guy with the Joker make-up? He’s based on a real criminal. The dude streaking past a gas station, police in chase? That’s a riff on a genuine naked felon. The woman twerking on the roof of a car speeding down the causeway? That actually happened. These are all examples of the ‘Florida man’, a meme that grew out of countless absurd headlines that all contain the same phrase: "Police arrest Florida man for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at Walmart" and “Florida man killed after dog steps on gas pedal" are just two examples. And so it seems that, through the recreation of these real events, one of GTA 6’s new sources of humour will be simply reflecting embarrassing reality and saying “This is you.” In short, Florida will write the jokes itself.
To what extent the full picture of
Read more on ign.com
