GTA 6 Report Claims Dan Houser’s Original Story Was Cancelled

A new report claims that Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser wrote multiple versions of Grand Theft Auto VI, but they were all cancelled. Rockstar Games is one of the most respected developers when it comes to its stories. Not only does the studio build complex, layered open-worlds, but they craft rich narratives with some great nuanced characters like Arthur Morgan and Niko Bellic. The bulk of Rockstar’s games have been penned by a group of key writers, often led by Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser. However, Houser left Rockstar back in 2020, just over a year after the release of Red Dead Redemption 2.

This has led many to wonder who is writing/wrote GTA 6. Houser took some key folks with him, though Red Dead Redemption 2 writer Michael Unsworth stayed at Rockstar until 2023. It’s likely Unsworth helped guide the story to its conclusion or at least got it to a good place before departing. However, we don’t really know much about the remaining narrative crew at Rockstar. It’s possible that Houser concepted ideas for GTA 6 before he left, as it would make sense to set up the next project before Red Dead Redemption 2 released so developers could transition to the next game, but it’s unclear how much of it he actually worked on.

GTA 6 Rumor Claims Dan Houser Wrote Three Different Stories That Were Cancelled

However, a new rumor has been making the rounds that suggest a bunch of different ideas for GTA 6 were scrapped over the years. A new report from a writer known as Fravillys claims that Dan Houser came up with three different stories for GTA 6, all of which involved multiple protagonists and would’ve been very different from the game we are getting. The first idea came in 2014 and would’ve featured three protagonists, like GTA 5. One was a corrupt cop who falls into organized crime to help protect his son (the second protagonist) who is in a world of trouble. The third character would’ve been the right-hand man to a Columbian drug lord with ambitions of creating a drug empire in the United States.

This was reportedly scrapped by publisher Take-Two Interactive after two years for being too dark and not meeting expectations. The second story was a Vice City police woman who illegally infiltrates and goes undercover in the criminal world to avenge her mom who was killed in the line of duty. Essentially, she goes rogue in the name of bringing down criminals. The second character would’ve been a crazy drug smuggler climbing the criminal ladder, but it’s unclear how their stories would’ve intersected and if they would’ve been allies or not. This was reportedly cancelled in 2018.

The third and final story reportedly penned by Dan Houser was about a grieving police woman (not too dissimilar from the second story) who is replaced by an ex-soldier, forcing the woman to fall into the criminal world. The report claims that Houser took a year-long sabbatical in 2019 after becoming exhausted by all the set backs and rewrites, ultimately choosing to leave Rockstar in 2020.

Of course, we have no idea how true this all really is. I highly advise taking it with a grain of salt, as Houser had said during the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 that he was glad they weren’t releasing GTA 6 during Trump’s presidency, which may suggest he wasn’t super knee-deep in the story of the game yet. I am sure some idea of GTA 6 has been in the works at Rockstar since 2013, but it would be hard to imagine that Houser and others were working on three different GTA games throughout Red Dead Redemption 2‘s development. Houser also claimed to be pulling off hundred hour work weeks toward the end of Red Dead Redemption 2‘s development, making it hard to imagine how he could have time to also work on GTA 6.

However, Rooster Teeth’s The Know reported in March 2018 that drug trafficking between Vice City and South America was going to play a big role in GTA 6. That report famously leaked the code name for the game which was later confirmed in the 2022 leaks for the game. Unfortunately, that report didn’t have much to offer in terms of story details, so it can’t corroborate any of this other information. It has been reported that Rockstar scaled back the idea of traveling between countries in GTA 6, so it’s entirely possible there is some truth in this report, but we will may never know. It seems like the love story is at the center of GTA 6 now, rather than drug smuggling, but it’s still a Grand Theft Auto game… so there will still probably be some peddling of narcotics.