GTA London Sequel Given Blow, Would Need Fallout Treatment

If you were hoping for a return to London in an upcoming Grand Theft Auto title, I have some bad news for you, because Rockstar Games’ former boss doesn’t think the franchise will return to the United Kingdom any time soon.

This might sound odd, but my first ever Grand Theft Auto game was the 1997 PlayStation release Grand Theft Auto: London 1969.

I have no idea how it wound up in my house. But there was a special, UK-exclusive version of Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 that, unlike the “Mission Pack” variants of the release, didn’t require the original Grand Theft Auto to play it, and I remember being absolutely baffled by it.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I always managed to get a bunch of random NPCs to follow me around and go on a bit of a crime spree, and that was more than fun enough for seven-year-old me. It wasn’t until I played Grand Theft Auto III a few years later that I realised that you were actually supposed to play all the missions dotted around the map.

Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 in all its glory, Rockstar Games

Given their UK roots, a lot of fans have been begging Rockstar Games to return to Britain for a future instalment in the GTA series, but Dan Houser has just put a dampener on fans’ hopes.

Houser, who resigned from Rockstar Games back in 2020, recently appeared on the Lex Fridman podcast and discussed the possibility of returning to London in a new GTA game. And, spoiler alert, it sounds like said possibility is very, very low.

“I think for a full GTA game, we always decided there was so much Americana inherent in the IP, it would be really hard to make it work in London or anywhere else”, Houser revealed.

“You know, you needed guns, you needed these larger-than-life characters. It just felt like the game was so much about America, possibly from an outsider's perspective. But that was so much about what the thing was that it wouldn't really have worked in the same way elsewhere.”

Sounds like the fans are going to have to take the Fallout: London route and take matters into their own hands if they want to see the franchise return to the UK any time soon.

Although that would end up bringing things full-circle, considering that Rockstar Games used the third-party modding tool GTACars to produce Grand Theft Auto: London 1969. Isn't it funny how these things loop around, eh.