Ask which games are set in Vice City and most people name one. There are four, and the one that gets forgotten is the most mechanically ambitious of the pre-GTA 6 entries: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, released on PSP in October 2006 and ported to PS2 in 2007.
It matters because Vice City Stories introduced an idea Grand Theft Auto has been circling ever since, and one that plenty of people are quietly hoping shows up in Leonida.
The Four Vice Cities
For orientation, the full lineage spans twenty-nine years:
| Game | Year | Setting | Protagonist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grand Theft Auto | 1997 | Vice City as one of three cities | Multiple |
| GTA: Vice City | 2002 | 1986 | Tommy Vercetti |
| GTA: Vice City Stories | 2006 | 1984 | Victor Vance |
| GTA 6 | 2026 | Modern day, all of Leonida | Jason and Lucia |
Our full Vice City games history covers the lineage in depth. The key structural point: Rockstar treats returning cities as reimaginings, not narrative sequels. Vice City Stories is a prequel to the 2002 game within the 3D era, and no 3D-era protagonist has ever crossed into the modern HD era.
What Vice City Stories Actually Did First
Vice City Stories is remembered, when it is remembered at all, as the handheld one. That undersells it badly.
Empire building. Victor Vance could seize enemy business sites across the map, choose what type of operation to run there (protection racket, smuggling, drugs, prostitution, robbery), invest in upgrades, and then defend them from rival attacks. Each site generated income and each had its own missions. This was, in 2006, a genuinely unusual amount of systemic property play for a GTA game.
Swimming. In a city built on water, the 3D-era games before it would drown you in a foot of ocean. Vice City Stories fixed that.
Rescue and vigilante variety. Its side-mission spread was unusually wide, including paramedic and firefighting work that felt integrated into the setting rather than bolted on.
A protagonist with a family. Victor Vance, brother of Lance Vance from the 2002 game, was written around obligation rather than ambition. He is dragged into crime by circumstance, not appetite.
The Bit That Maps Onto GTA 6
Two of those threads point straight at Leonida.
Property and business systems. GTA V let you buy properties that generated passive income with very little to do. Vice City Stories asked you to take them, run them and defend them. That is a much more active loop, and it is the model people usually mean when they ask whether GTA 6 will let you build something. Rockstar has confirmed nothing about GTA 6 property systems, as our properties and businesses piece sets out, but it is worth knowing the series has done this before and did it in this city.
The reluctant criminal. Victor Vance is pulled in rather than driven. Rockstar's published GTA 6 synopsis describes Jason and Lucia as people for whom "an easy score goes wrong," landing them inside a conspiracy they did not choose. That is closer to Victor's shape than to Tommy Vercetti's, whose story is pure rise-and-fall ambition modelled on Scarface. Our Miami crime-media influences breakdown explores why the 2026 game's framing points somewhere different from the 2002 one.
Where the Comparison Breaks Down
Being fair to the scale gap.
Vice City Stories was a PSP game with two small islands and a hard technical ceiling. GTA 6 covers the entire state of Leonida across six major regions: Vice City, Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga National Park, on a map roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times the size of GTA 5's, with 700+ enterable interiors.
The empire mechanic also worked partly because the map was small. Twelve or so contested sites on two islands is legible. The same system spread over a state would need a fundamentally different design to avoid becoming a chore, which may be exactly why Rockstar has not repeated it.
And tonally, 1984 Vice City was a neon fantasy. Modern Leonida, judging by the trailers, is a sunburnt, phone-recorded, mugshot-and-bodycam place. Those are different registers even in the same fictional geography.
Is Vice City Stories Worth Playing Before November?
If you are working through the pre-launch backlog, it is a reasonable pick for the empire missions and for the city as it existed two years before the 2002 game. It has aged like a 2006 handheld game has aged, which is to say the controls will be a shock. Play it for the systems and the map, not the feel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GTA 6 a sequel to Vice City Stories?
No. Rockstar treats returning cities as reimaginings rather than narrative continuations, and no 3D-era character has ever crossed into the modern HD era. GTA 6 is a new story about Jason and Lucia in the modern state of Leonida.
Will Victor Vance appear in GTA 6?
There is no indication of it. Rockstar has never mentioned Victor Vance in any GTA 6 material, and the continuity structure argues against it.
Does GTA 6 have empire building?
Unannounced. Rockstar has confirmed 700+ enterable interiors but has said nothing about property ownership, business management or income systems.
When was Vice City Stories released?
October 2006 on PSP, with a PlayStation 2 port following in 2007. It is set in 1984, two years before the events of the 2002 Vice City.
The Bottom Line
Vice City Stories is the strongest argument against the idea that Grand Theft Auto has always been a fixed formula. It was a handheld spin-off that quietly shipped one of the series' most systemic ideas, in the same city GTA 6 is returning to, and then that idea largely disappeared. Whether Rockstar rebuilds it at state scale is one of the open questions the August 27 Extended Look could begin to answer.