With Vice City being a rumored location for Grand Theft Auto 6, fans may be imagining what a modern Grand Theft Auto game set there could look like in comparison to its predecessors. Many GTA fans know Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and its protagonist, Tommy Vercetti, but there is another Vice City-focused game and protagonist players may not be too familiar with: GTA: Vice City Stories and its protagonist, Victor Vance. Although both games take place in the same place, they each represent distinct stories in the GTA universe.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was originally released on PlayStation 2 in October 2002. It wasn't until four years later that GTA: Vice City Stories arrived - not on consoles, but on PSP. While Vice City Stories isn’t officially a part of the main GTA series, it did follow another PSP-exclusive game, GTA: Liberty City Stories, which released in October 2005.
If GTA 6 does take place in the Grand Theft Auto equivalent of Miami, players would likely find themselves seeing various Vice City callbacks, like references to Tommy Vercetti and involvement in the drug wars that dominate the city. Sure, it would be interesting to see a modernized Vice City free of drugs, but this likely won’t be the case, as both GTA: Vice City and GTA: Vice City Stories brought players into the city’s drug operations. Still, despite this similarity, the two games approached Vice City's drug operations in completely different ways.
What Makes GTA: Vice City and GTA: Vice City Stories Different?
GTA: Vice City Stories is a prequel to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, with Vice City Stories taking place in 1984, two years before the events of Vice City. Vice City Stories' protagonist is Victor Vance, a Corporal in the army stationed at Vice City’s Fort Baxter, while the protagonist of Vice City is Tommy Vercetti, a mobster who was recently released from prison after serving 15 years for murder. Victor gets into the drug business out of necessity, seeking to pay for medicine for his ill brother, Pete Vance, but Tommy aims to reenter a life of crime for potential financial gain. If the name Vance sounds familiar to fans, it’s because Victor’s other brother, Lance Vance, works with, betrays, and is eventually killed by Tommy in Vice City.
Victor is killed at the beginning of Vice City in an ambushed drug deal. Some fans speculated Lance's murdered brother may have been Pete, instead, as Victor shows no interest in continuing to deal drugs at the end of Vice City Stories, but what happened to Tommy Vercetti, he became the kingpin of Vice City and could possibly still be alive in GTA's modern era.
A return to Vice City for Grand Theft Auto 6 could mean a return to business with various crime families and drug lords there. Players could potentially be like Tommy Vercetti in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, becoming the location's next big crime kingpin. Or perhaps they could be like Victor Vance in GTA: Vice City Stories, using the city's crime organizations to help someone in need. If Vice City is the next stop for the GTA series, Rockstar has a lot of possibilities to choose from.
