What Does It Even Mean For GTA To Go Woke?

thegamer.com:

Grand Theft Auto is going woke. Leaks suggest that the upcoming GTA6 will not only star a female protagonist, but in a groundbreaking step for representation, she will also be a sexy spicy Latina with a background in crime - you know, like literally every other South American woman in video games. The whole discussion around Grand Woke Auto has been ridiculous from both sides (although predictably, worse from the outrage crowd), so let’s break it down a little.

If you are one of these gamers screaming at the void that you’ll now have to steal cars and beat up random citizens as a woman, you should know that Grand Theft Auto has been laughing at you the whole time. You have always been the punchline. Grand Theft Auto is anti-America and has always been satirising or parodying the American ideals of excess. If you have thought Grand Theft Auto was all about blowing stuff up and America being cool as fuck, I assume you are still in denial about Homelander being the baddie of The Boys.

Related: GTA Online Will Never Be As Fun As GTA 4’s Multiplayer Mayhem

If not for the leaks explicitly spelling it out, I suspect the thematic points GTA6 makes would have gone over your head. Aside from the point that women exist, of course, which seems to be at the centre of this meltdown.

On the other side is the argument that GTA was always woke, which is frankly a ridiculous argument to make. Across GTA5’s many ports it had transphobic jokes edited out of it, while beating up and killing sex workers remains a lynchpin of the GTA experience. The game relies on racist, sexist, and homophobic stereotypes frequently. The game was never the right wing wonderland some media illiterate fools thought it was, but it wasn’t a left wing paradise