Grand Theft Auto has always had a complicated relationship with women. For decades, it’s been known as the series where you can visit a strip club, hire a sex worker, and swiftly beat her to death in the nearest alley. Violence against women in virtual settings praised for their unflinching realism is frequently turned into a punchline players are expected to chuckle at again and again and again. With the series achieving mainstream global stardom at a time when the medium was still predominantly an archaic boy’s club, it’s no surprise it has stuck around.
But with the arrival of player character Lucia Caminos in the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 later this year, Rockstar has an opportunity to completely redefine the franchise’s problematic dynamic with women and potentially introduce one of the strongest female protagonists this medium has ever seen–but we all know that sticking the landing is easier said than done.
People often claim that everybody is an equal target in GTA’s vast and satiristic worlds, but it’s hard to understand that perspective when all the protagonists are men and most female characters around them are used to advance their stories, rather than be a substantial part of them. Past GTA women typically haven’t had genuine agency or personalities that aren’t compounded by misogynistic cliche. There are rare bright sparks, such as hardened crime lord Asuka Kasen in GTA 3 or San Andrea’s emotionally intelligent Kendl Johnson. But it’s difficult not to turn my nose up at the erratic white privilege of Michael De Santa’s wife and daughter, Franklin’s Aunt Denise and her obsession with upending the patriarchy, or GTA 3’s Catalina, who after betraying Claude at the end of the game is killed in what amounts to an off-screen gag.
These are jokes and storytelling that have aged poorly, especially now that Rockstar has proven it can write mature and nuanced female characters like Sadie Adler in Red Dead Redemption 2. That game was a masterpiece with a more considered and introspective approach to character writing, a quality that will hopefully translate over to Grand Theft Auto 6. If it doesn’t, I’ll be sorely disappointed because the potential is clear to see. An open world heavily inspired by our own yet simultaneously bolstered by biting satire is the perfect space to tell a compelling story about a troubled yet well-meaning female lead in 2026.
This leads us to the debut of Lucia Caminos in Grand Theft Auto 6, the series’ very first female protagonist–not counting a quartet of generic women found in the original GTA who, like every other character in that game, had no impact on the plot– who will be just as important as her male counterpart, Jason Duval. How will she be depicted in the narrative? How will she play? How will her presence in Vice City be considered when merely existing in an environment like this one would be fundamentally different for a woman than it is for a man?
Rockstar is hopefully in the process of answering all these questions, and figuring out ways to transform its beloved power fantasy to accommodate a lead like Lucia, or at the very least, stop and think about how previous games punched down on female characters in order to lift up the stories of flawed men around them. This needs to be addressed.
Female characters have proven to be important narrative devices in past GTA games, but there’s sadly no denying that women are consistently presented in the series as apathetic love interests, victims of violence, evident foils, or symbols of what each protagonist is fighting for, rather than as characters with agency of their own to act. Lucia is changing all of that simply by being playable and offering the player a chance to make choices in her shoes.
Players should be free to decide how a powerful woman inhabits a crime-ridden open world where women continue to be treated as sexual objects or signs of victory for men happy to use them for material gain. But will Grand Theft Auto 6 put Lucia in a position to impact how the women around her are treated, or decide whether to lean into a patriarchy the series has spent much of its history perpetuating?
This is where I believe the increased realism of GTA 6 will come into play, especially given everything we learned from last month’s extended look. Just like in Red Dead Redemption 2, you can hold down the shoulder button and press one of the corresponding face buttons to carry out a series of bespoke interactions. In the trailer, we see Jason have the option to pet, scold, or study a nearby dog in a nefarious drug den. While this moment is pretty miniscule, it’s decent evidence that similar interactions will carry over to the rest of Vice City.
Whether you encountered a stranger fishing in the wilderness or a local woman standing on the streets of Saint Denis, most characters in Red Dead Redemption 2 responded to Arthur Morgan in a way that took into account both the context of their surroundings and precisely who the ailing gunslinger was in the moment. Was he seen as an honorable cowboy or a treacherous outlaw known for stealing from the weak? Regardless of what you made him into, in every single interaction, he’s viewed as a man. An aspect of his identity that, within this period setting, frames him as superior to all the women around him. Arthur is an honorable man, but even he can’t upend the societal norms that Rockstar depicts in its world.
One of my favorite parts of Red Dead 2 is how it gradually deconstructs Arthur’s masculinity to reveal the vulnerable emotions hidden within him, and how an expectation to provide, serve, and continually reject the modernization of his own world has resulted in a man who is stubborn yet hopeful. Rockstar has a great opportunity to offer the same kind of nuance to its first female protagonist.
I cannot wait to see how Lucia is depicted in these scenarios and beyond, since in a realistic open world largely inspired by our own, it’s impossible to ignore that she is very much a conventionally attractive woman in a man’s world, where many people are bound to view her as inferior because of her gender. Bypassing that by making her a badass girlboss is certainly an option, but it would also neglect the nuanced realism I want Rockstar to lean into. Show us what it means to play as a woman like Lucia in Grand Theft Auto, with her own layered backstory and complicated motivations, while building upon it more so with a growing romance that will force her to make hard personal decisions that change her life forever.
Putting aside the broader plot implications of playing a GTA game as a woman, even casually roaming the open world as Lucia is bound to be framed by her identity. Interactions with men will presumably result in different responses that male players potentially aren’t used to, and I also can’t wait to see whether we can decide to use Lucia’s femininity to our advantage at times, to receive a cheeky discount at stores, work our way through missions in ways that Jason never could, and even completely subvert the series’ long-held view on nudity and sexuality. And that’s not to mention how other women in the game might treat Lucia, since they’ll be familiar with the same hardships.
Time will tell whether Lucia will be able to strike up unique relationships with other men and women across Vice City the way male protagonists have in the past, whether we’re going on our own dates or hitting up a strip club. I just hope there are fewer deceased sex workers this time.
Rockstar has an opportunity to do something extraordinary with Lucia Caminos, and it would be a tragic loss if it didn’t offer its first female character a serious narrative role and all of the agency its male leads have received in the past. I want to step into the shoes of a woman in Vice City, a setting defined by crime and misogyny, to truly understand how it feels to try and survive amidst its neon-lit streets as a character who knows them like few others do.
