What Does A Female Protagonist Mean For GTA 6?
The recent GTA 6 leaks being confirmed as legitimate by Rockstar adds an interesting layer to all of the discussions around them. I'm reluctant to dive too much into what the leaks actually reveal, given how early in development the footage is purportedly from and how much games change during production, but there is one major standout: GTA 6 looks set to have a female protagonist. Earlier reports (which came from discussions with devs rather than hacked video footage) suggested the game would have two protagonists - a white man and a Latina woman. The leaks confirmed this, and left us with a few questions about exactly what a female protagonist for GTA means.
Die-hard fans were quick to point out that GTA has had a female protagonist before, but that's more of a technicality at this stage. The original top down game did indeed have a generic female avatar to choose from, but ever since the series gained superstardom and began pushing the technological boundaries of what gaming could do, it has been a sausage party. While women have often adorned the box art in various seductive poses, few female characters of note have featured anywhere else, and fewer still once you take out those only there as sexual objects. GTA has always presented itself as being satirical, and while I agree that the clowns crying wokery are the exact buffoons GTA has been lampooning all these years, it has enjoyed the wetwork of satire a little too much. Beating up sex workers with no consequences says... what exactly about society?
Related: The GTA Leaks Could Change Everything, But They Won't
Centering a female character makes for an interesting choice. Female characters can be the protagonist and still be wildly sexualised and exist mainly for
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