GTA 6 Vice City vs the original Vice City (2002)

Are GTA 6 and Vice City in the same universe?

No, and GTA 6 isn’t a remake or a sequel either: it builds a new Vice City with the same name and Miami inspiration. Rockstar splits its series into separate universes. GTA III and its follow-ups, Vice City and Vice City Stories included, form one, and GTA IV onward forms another. Kotaku explains that an older-era character can’t simply carry over, though Rockstar sometimes reuses a name or look for a new version.

The bigger change is scale. In 2002, Vice City was the whole game: two main islands plus smaller areas that unlocked as the story went on. In GTA 6 it is one of six regions Rockstar has named in the state of Leonida, its version of Florida. Our GTA 6 Vice City guide covers what Rockstar has shown.

Is GTA 6 set in the 80s like Vice City?

No. The 2002 game is set in 1986, and Rockstar’s own description of it starts with “Welcome to the 1980s” and a decade of “big hair, excess, and pastel suits”. GTA 6 is contemporary, though Rockstar hasn’t named an exact year.

Rockstar’s line on the new city: “We’re a long way from the ’80s, but Vice City is still the sun and fun capital of America.” Rupert Humphries, its senior vice president of narrative, described the job to LOVE magazine as creating “a version of today’s world”.

The ’80s survive as a bonus. Every copy bought before November 20, 2026 gets the Vintage Vice City Pack, which Take-Two says will “flash back to when the neon burned brightest”. It adds a ’55 Vapid Stanier with a garage by Ocean Beach, outfits and hairstyles for both leads, and a tropical weapon pattern.

How do Jason and Lucia compare with Tommy Vercetti?

In the 2002 game you play one man. Tommy Vercetti, voiced by the late Ray Liotta, leaves prison in 1986 after 15 years and is sent south by his boss, Sonny Forelli, to oversee a drug deal. The deal is ambushed, and Tommy ends up running the city’s underworld himself. Our GTA Vice City (2002) page has the full story.

GTA 6 has two playable leads, and Kotaku saw control pass from Lucia to Jason within seconds in An Extended Look. In Rockstar’s profiles, Jason did a stint in the Army before drifting into work for drug runners in the Keys, and Lucia has already done time in the Leonida Penitentiary. Their trouble starts when “an easy score goes wrong”. Tommy’s story is a climb to the top; theirs, as Rockstar tells it, is about getting out alive.

Is Tommy in GTA 6? Rockstar hasn’t said so, and he belongs to the older universe. What you get are nods by name: Rockstar says the Vintage Vice City Pack’s weapon pattern takes its cue from “Tommy Vercetti’s iconic palm tree button-up”, and it describes the Ultimate Edition’s Hawk & Little Morgan revolvers as “sourced from the Vercetti Estate”.

How does the tone compare?

The 2002 game is a period piece. Its look and story borrow from ’80s crime films like Scarface and from the TV series Miami Vice, and producer Leslie Benzies described Miami as “a party town” with “that same dark edge underneath”.

GTA 6 aims its satire at the present. Rockstar pitches it as “the darkest side of the sunniest place in America”, and Humphries told LOVE it has to feel “vital to the moment of release”, with everything “satirical, larger than life, and more grotesque”. For us, that’s the clearest split: the original sent up a decade that was already over, while GTA 6 is going after the one we live in.

Is the GTA 6 map bigger than Vice City’s?

The map as a whole, yes. Aaron Garbut, the 2002 game’s art director, put that Vice City at almost twice the size of GTA III’s Liberty City. Now Rockstar’s head of development, he told Game Informer that Leonida is the biggest map the studio has made “by some degree”, and VGC reports he called it twice the size of GTA 5’s.

How big Vice City is on its own is unknown. Rockstar hasn’t given square miles or said how much of Leonida is city, so any size comparison you see online is a fan estimate. Official footage does show the jump in detail: Kotaku lined up 26 scenes from Rockstar’s August 2026 gameplay video against the 2002 game and called the difference “staggering”.

A Flash FM está em GTA 6?

Yes. The 2002 game’s radio ran on licensed ’80s songs, about nine hours of music in all. Flash FM was its home for the decade’s pop hits.

In GTA 6, Rockstar calls Flash FM “the Vice City institution” for pop, now hosted by Robyn and Alex, and its preview mixes Charli xcx’s “Good Ones” with MGMT’s “Electric Feel”. Slayer’s “Raining Blood”, which Destructoid notes was on V-Rock in 2002, turns up on the new metal station The Chamber 106.6. Rockstar promises its “biggest and widest-ranging selection of in-game radio and podcasts yet”.

Rockstar hasn’t confirmed any other returning Vice City station, and we don’t use leaked material. Our GTA 6 radio guide tracks every confirmed station.

What did Vice City Stories add?

Vice City Stories (PSP, October 31, 2006; PS2, March 2007) went back to the city two years before Tommy arrived. Set in 1984, it follows Vic Vance, a corporal at Fort Baxter who gets mixed up in the drug trade, is framed and is thrown out of the Army. Rockstar later confirmed that Vic is the brother Lance loses in the 2002 game’s opening ambush.

Its big addition was empire building: you take businesses from rival gangs, run them for income and defend them. It also put a virtual Phil Collins on stage to perform “In the Air Tonight”. Our Vice City Stories page has the rest.

In GTA 6, Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds” plays in An Extended Look, which Kotaku tied back to that cameo, though Rockstar hasn’t said whether it is on the radio. And like Vic, Jason is a former soldier who ended up in the drug trade, a parallel we’ve noticed, not one Rockstar has drawn.