GTA 6’s Jason and Lucia vs earlier GTA protagonists

Who are the GTA 6 protagonists?

Two playable leads, Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos. Rockstar’s profiles say Jason was raised among grifters and crooks, tried the Army to shake off a troubled youth, and drifted into work for drug runners in the Keys. Lucia’s father had her throwing punches from the time she could walk, and fighting for her family put her in the Leonida Penitentiary.

What’s new is the setup. Rockstar’s blurb has the pair forced to lean on each other after “an easy score goes wrong”, and IGN calls it a Bonnie and Clyde-style romance, one it reports is optional. Before this, GTA gave you one criminal at a time or, in GTA V, three men pulled together by heists. Our profiles of Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos cover the rest.

Is Lucia the first female protagonist in GTA?

Technically no, but she’s the first who counts as a real lead. The 1997 original let you pick your criminal from a roster, and on PC four of the eight were women: Divine, Mikki, Katie and Ulrika, as Kotaku, PC Gamer and Time Extension point out. None had a voice or a personality, Kotaku adds, and PC Gamer says all eight used the same male-gendered dialogue text and looked near-identical from above.

Two more arrived in GTA 2’s Game Boy Color version, Candy and Gretchen, according to Kotaku. Then GTA Online, launched in 2013, let you build a male or female character, though that character doesn’t talk. Lucia is the first woman to star as a fixed, voiced lead in a GTA story, and PC Gamer called her the series’ “first proper leading lady”.

Nor is she the first Latino lead: Luis Lopez, the Dominican-American star of 2009’s The Ballad of Gay Tony, came before her, and Time Extension describes the 1997 game’s Katie as Hispanic. Remezcla called Lucia “the first Latina lead in GTA history”, though Rockstar itself hasn’t stated her ethnicity.

Who did you play as in GTA 1, GTA 2 and GTA London?

In the top-down era, mostly whoever you picked. GTA 1 offered eight characters on PC and four on PlayStation; you gave your pick a name, and the choice changed nothing about how the game played. The London 1969 pack (1999) kept the idea, with eight criminals on PC and four on PlayStation in IGN’s reviews.

GTA 2 (1999) dropped the roster on PC and PlayStation and gave you one criminal; the live-action promo film used for its intro follows one named Claude Speed. Only the Game Boy Color version let you choose, from six. Rockstar hasn’t mentioned a roster or character creator for GTA 6, though IGN reports you can restyle Jason and Lucia and change their build through the gym or overeating.

How do Jason and Lucia compare with Claude, Tommy and CJ?

Each of those three carried a game alone, and the first never said a word. In a 2011 Q&A, Rockstar said GTA III’s Claude stayed silent partly to help players identify with him, but mostly because it had so many other problems to solve in 2001, such as making everyone else talk in motion-captured cutscenes. Talk of a speaking lead only started during work on Vice City.

That 2002 game delivered one: Tommy Vercetti, voiced by Ray Liotta, out of prison in 1986 after a 15-year sentence. San Andreas (2004) followed Carl “CJ” Johnson, voiced by Young Maylay, back to Los Santos after his mother was killed in a drive-by. Both are one man’s story; Jason and Lucia’s, as Rockstar tells it, is about two people who need each other to get out alive.

Rockstar hasn’t said any of the three appears in GTA 6. Back in 2011 it explained that its 2D, 3D and HD games are separate universes, and that it didn’t believe GTA III characters could exist in GTA IV’s, which Kotaku says is the universe GTA 6 belongs to.

Is Jason and Lucia’s story closer to Niko Bellic’s?

In places. GTA IV (2008) opened the HD era with Niko Bellic, an Eastern European war veteran trying to escape his past in Liberty City. Jason has a military past too, and Rockstar says Lucia’s mom has dreamed of a good life since the family lived in Liberty City, though it hasn’t tied them to GTA IV’s story.

Both also hinge on choices. GTA IV ends one of two ways, depending on whether Niko takes a late deal or chooses revenge. IGN reports GTA 6 has choices big and small, with minor ones adding up to bigger consequences. These parallels are ours, not Rockstar’s.

How is switching different from Michael, Franklin and Trevor?

GTA V (2013) moved the series from one lead to three. Outside missions you could jump between them at will, except at certain story points, and each had a special ability: Michael’s bullet time in gunfights, Franklin slowing time while driving, and Trevor dealing double damage while taking half.

GTA 6 keeps the switch with two. IGN reports you can swap whenever you’re exploring, though it may be disabled at points in the story, and a call or text brings your partner over to help or hang out. Rockstar North’s Rob Nelson told IGN the team weighed four leads but worried about “diluting” your time with each, so it chose “two characters in a relationship”. Here’s how switching between Jason and Lucia works.

Special abilities are an open question. Kotaku saw Jason slow time to aim in An Extended Look, Rockstar’s August 2026 gameplay video, but Rockstar hasn’t said whether each lead gets a unique power like GTA V’s trio.

What don’t we know about Jason and Lucia yet?

Quite a lot, with GTA 6 due on November 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Rockstar’s profiles give no ages, and GameRant noted in early October that Rockstar still hasn’t published a full cast list, so the actors fans name for the leads are unconfirmed. Nor has it said how missions are split between them, or how the story ends.

For us, the real test is balance. GTA V’s trio was at its best on the same job, and GTA 6 builds its whole story around a pair. We’ll rank Lucia against Tommy, CJ and Niko after playing her story.