Two weeks ago Rockstar said it was bringing its seminal hit Grand Theft Auto III to state-of-the-art mobile platforms. Yes, they already know what you're thinking.

Bringing over Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would be a "technical challenge," the studio told Digital Trends, but they're already thinking in that direction, calling it "very possible."

What else is possible? Playing the game with a good ole wired Xbox 360 controller. The mobile version will support USB controllers on devices that have USB controller support. Ah, but what about the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S? Well, there's the Camera Connection Kit, or other third-party multiport interfaces that let you connect such devices.

You can check out Evan Narcisse's impressions of the mobile version here.

Grand Theft Auto 3 Mobile Hands-on Preview [Digital Trends]

Women in Grand Theft Auto games have had many roles. Mom. Girlfriend. Nightclub manager. Criminal.

Lots of roles. Just never the main one.

On the eve of the release of the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto V, and with no inside knowledge about who will be the star of this new game, I find myself thinking back to an article I wrote in April 2008, in which I wondered what it would be like to play a GTA that starred a woman.

Some people hated the idea and others loved it.

I wrote the piece after I'd played as a woman in the multiplayer of the then-unreleased Grand Theft Auto. It was a first. I'd played Grand Theft Auto games on the PlayStation 2, the PSP and the Game Boy Advance, and I'd always played as a man, because the characters Rockstar Games created to lead their games were men. In GTA IV multiplayer, however, you could play as a woman. So I did and, of course, it didn't make much of a difference. What would be different, I thought, was if she was the game's star. That idea does come up, from time to time.

GTA games are known, by and large, for their chaos. Say what you will about their satire, their storytelling, the quality of their cutscenes, their soundtracks and many of the other commendable aspects of the series, they're associated with interactive mayhem. You jack a car, you go on a spree. The cops give chase. That's always been GTA at its most fun, a sort of Pac-Man with guns and cars played both within and beyond walls that you can vault a sportscar over. And that kind of virtual chaos has always been orchestrated by men in these games. Their cast of man has been diverse. GTA leads have not been the bland white guys that are the norm in gaming. We've had black, Latino, and Eastern European men in the lead roles and never in a way that seemed like a big deal. They just fit.

I'd wondered in 2008 if it would be a big deal if a woman was the lead character of GTA. Or if it'd be no big deal at all. The story I wrote back then was for MTV.com, which has scrubbed the comments from the post. The web-archiving Wayback Machine, however, kept a snapshot of the article, so I can show you some of the reactions I got (I've kept the original text intact, so forgive the spelling...)

A reader named Rob:

"i think it would be googd to have a woman in the game. I think that when you start the game you should be able to choose wheter your a female or male instead of woman always being prostitutes in the gta games"

Another reader named Rob:

Absolutely not. As a side character maybe, but as the protagonist, no thank you. It's not that I've got anything again women, it's just the masculinity of ‘bazukaring' a helicopter would be somewhat diminished if I was playing as woman. IMO.

WTFMan! said:

Atleast they took the liberty of even INCLUDING female advatars! It doesn't matter, male or female, just shut the hell up and enjoy the game as humans!

A reader named Incedious:

What a irrelevant debate this is. Why are you even arguing this. When the main character of a movie is a male (ex: Frodo in [Lord of the Rings]). Do we have to debate how good the movies would be if he would be a female … no. We should just accept these games as a creation of a group of artists and leave it at that. They have a story in mind from conception to creation that they want to follow. Who wants to hear a bunch of crap like … "Scarface should've been a woman" or whatever. Historically, how many mobsters can you recall that have been women ??? That's what I thought. Maybe you should go try and Google it or something.

And KJB815 said:

Whats the difference, its just a character, personally i dont think a woman would look good on a game such as GTA, not through chauvinism but simply because it would look vulgar and im sorry women swearing and killing people with AK47 Kalashnikovs isnt very realistic. I do feel sorry for all women enjoying GTA, while waiting for a female protagonist, but i think it wouldnt suit the game in the same way as Vercetti or Bellic has and will do respectively.

I apologise to the women but i think Men look better (personally)

I'd call that a mixed reaction.

I wondered what it would be like if a series that might be branded a male fantasy starred a woman. I wondered how that would affect the games' presentation of sexuality, if not violence, and what players would make of it. I wondered what it'd be like to play a GTA with a woman as the leading hell-raiser.

I've found all of Rockstar's GTA characters interesting and most of them like-able. I've heard that, for the new game, there may be multiple playable lead characters. While I won't know if that's for sure at least until the GTA V trailer hits on Wednesday, hearing about that possibility got me thinking the odds of playing as a woman in some wild GTA adventure felt like they increased just a little.

We'll find out next week. But, for the record, playing as a female lead character in Grand Theft auto? I'd be up for it. You?

Whipping rain that dots your screen in a firefight. Fog that hides lingering zombies. Sheets of ice that cause you car to spin out of control. Weather can be an important part of video games. Over the years there have been some amazing takes on gameplay-impacting weather.

In this, our inaugural "NeoGAF Asks" story, Gaffer ScOULaris asks his fellow forum-goers what game handled weather changes the best.

Here's what he had to say over on the Internet's gaming forum:

Good weather effects are something that can add a lot to a game's sense of place and believable atmosphere. Usually it's the more dramatic shifts in weather that grab our attention. Who can forget the first time they stepped out into Hyrule on a rainy night on the SNES? Or how about your first encounter with a thunderstorm on the streets of Liberty City? As hardware and rendering techniques continue to improve, we are slowly getting to a place where realistic weather effects in games are becoming the rule rather than the exception.

That being said, there's a certain last-gen game that really made an impact on me with the way that it handled shifts in weather. That game was Bully on the PS2.

For those of you who never played this great game, I'll give you a quick rundown. Bully was an open-world action-adventure game developed Rockstar Vancouver that put you in the shoes of a troubled teenager who has been shipped off to boarding school for a year while his parents go on vacation in his absence. The game is set in an around this prestigious boarding school, eventually opening the player up to a rather large neighboring city with tons of things to do and places to explore.

Since the game's story progresses over the course of an entire school year, we get to watch the entire game setting shift and change with each passing season. We start the game at the tail-end of summer, when leaves fill out the trees and the sun beats down through a clear blue sky.

After a pivotal story segment that takes place on Halloween night (complete with costumes and teenage hi-jinks), the game world shifts into the fall season. The second you walk outside your dormitory and see the leafless trees and cool greyish-blue skybox with the sunlight struggling to break through an early-morning mist, you can practically smell that change in the air that comes with the new season. If you've played the game, you probably remember how convincingly, yet subtly this was handled in the game.

But the most dramatic and visually impressive change comes when the game hits Christmas time. Suddenly the town you've been exploring all this time is blanketed with fluffy white snow. All of your classmates and denizens of the city outside the gates now don scarves and heavy jackets as opposed to the lighter clothing that they wore before. Your mom sends you a festive Christmas sweater with Rudolf on the front. Honestly, I have never seen winter/Christmas time conveyed this fully and honestly in a game. I felt completely transported and my memories of Christmas with family up north (Michigan) began to flood in. Rockstar Vancouver had to essentially re-skin the entire setting and all of its inhabitants. I'm just incredibly impressed by that.

It probably helped that I was playing this game sometime around November of 2007, when the colder weather was finally starting to roll into Florida. I find myself to be in a generally better mood at all times when the typically hot and humid climate in Florida shifts for a measly three months into something much cooler and more pleasant. Feeling the cool air come through my apartment window while running around Bullworth Academy, blanketed by the cool-blue tint and icy haze that accompany wintertime in the game, I was completely immersed in this virtual place.

Eventually the game finishes in late-spring/early summer, where things begin to look like how they did in the beginning of the game, lending a nice full-circle feeling to the ending. The weather that surrounds us in real life can affect our moods without us always realizing it, and I think that the virtual weather within Bully had a very similar effect. It kept the game always feeling fresh throughout and really sold Bullworth as a believable place.

———

So what game do you think handled weather changes the best? The example I chose dealt with plot-based, long-term shifts in weather, but feel free to include more traditional real-time examples of great weather effects. If it weren't for Bully, I'd probably have to go with Red Dead Redemption for how it well it depicted shifts from day to night, sudden rainstorms, and the shift to icy wilderness when heading up into the mountains.

A decade ago, Rockstar Games was trying to be funny.

Starting in February of 2001, all the way to the 18th of October, just before the most important game release in their company's history, they were trying to make people laugh about Grand Theft Auto III. They did it with a fake online newspaper chronicling the lunacy of Liberty City, the setting for the then-upcoming game. This was Rockstar's Onion or Colbert Report and it mostly hit the mark.

A lot of the jokes hold up. Others are a time capsule of a Rockstar that we haven't seen in a long time.

Fake GTA news started hitting the web in February on a website called the Liberty Tree. You can still view it. The archives of the Tree are still live on Rockstar's site, though they're ill-fitted for modern browsers and require that you allow pop-ups if you want to enjoy the Tree's excellent joke ads.

Sometimes the Tree ran stories that were really promoting the game's signature features, like this article, that was the first to run in the paper...

Others stories were obviously written to have some fun explaining things that weren't in the game...

The Tree was stuffed with jokes. In fact, the very design of the paper was a joke, from the asinine Liberty Tree slogan "Yesterday's News Today" to the navigation bar that showed that the paper included sections for News, TV Listings, Horoscopes, Classifieds and even Gratuitous Violence.

Sometimes the jokes fell flat as they reached for relevance...

Some were absurdly lewd, calling back to the kind of sex jokes that seemed targeted at the 14-year-old boy in all of us—the kind of humor Rockstar seems to have been drifting from in the last several years...

It's striking how many of Rockstar's targets a decade ago are still worthy targets today (their don't ask/don't tell joke seen atop this story, for example). In an immigration piece, Rockstar's reporters are both promoting a possible character in their game but having fun with America's tolerance for possibly-illegal foreigners. The three-paragraph story ends with this bit:

"This guy is clearly bad news" said Ray Mathers, Head of Immigration at Francis International. "He couldn't even show us where he was from on a map. What kind of idiot can't find where they live on a map? We don't need his kind in our country, thank you very much."

They hit bad weight-loss scams squarely with a fake ad that comes very close to the satirical pitch in the GTA games:

They also ran this excellent ad for a web-game called Pogo. Through the fake review quotes you can feel Rockstar's scorn for video game critics who would blindly praise the cuter video games out there. Remember, in 2001, darker, edgier games were not dominant and in pushing the limits of violence, sexuality and general rebellious attitude, Rockstar had fewer allies and less widespread acceptance.

A decade since the October 22, 2001 release of Grand Theft Auto III Rockstar's old jokes still have bite. That's a credit to what they accomplished. Amid all the controversy back then of what was possible in the game (and what wasn't possible, even though the critics said it was), the idea was mostly lost on the general public that GTA was good, smart satire. A read of The Liberty Tree is a reminder of how clever Rockstar could be—and occasionally how juvenile they could be, too.

On the eve of the release of the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto V, for those looking to experience vintage Rockstar, The Liberty Tree is worth a read.

Liberty Tree [Rockstar Games]

And I don't mean the iconic "Price is Right" font. I mean the way the latest game in the series, Grand Theft Auto V, has a rather interesting employment of antique US currency.

As spotted by a Reddit user, the "FIVE" at the end of the game's logo is lifted almost directly from an old Silver Certificate, a type of paper currency used in the US between 1878 and 1964 (and which, if you can still find a note, technically remains legal tender).

In particular, it's from the design of an 1899 note featuring Running Antelope, an American Indian commemorated for his belief in a compromise with the encroaching United States rather than war.

What does this mean? Nothing! Everything! The particularly mad among you will take either the Indian or 1899 angle and run with it, but I think it's just a neat way of tying US currency (always at the heart of a GTA game) to the franchise's use of Roman numerals in its logos: by the early 20th century, US paper currency would be using "5" instead of "V", and "5" just wouldn't cut it on a Grand Theft Auto box!

With Rockstar about to announce the release of Grand Theft Auto V, we're all abuzz theorizing, postulating, and prognosticating about things that the game will or won't have. Totilo's looked at what systems the game might be on, Crecente guessed about possible settings. And then, Stephen got a tip that the game will indeed be set in L.A. and may even feature multiple protagonists.

I wanted to take a second to look back at the thing that has always defined GTA for me: The sweet, sweet music.

When we talk about great video game soundtracks, we're often talking about video game original scores—it's a category that GTA games don't quite sit comfortably in. But it must be said that taken as a whole, GTAoffers some of the most pleasurable musical experiences in gaming. Hell, these guys were cool enough to score a trailer with music by Philip Glass, so it's not surprising that their musical choices are always top-notch.

The way the game's soundtrack melds with the game world is something special—it's basically diegetic, in that the only music that plays is the music on the radio in vehicles. Cutscenes, too, are accompanied by music from radios in the background playing tunes from the various game's radio stations. It's remarkably organic, and as a result, a frantic car chase might be scored by Miles Davis or Guns 'n Roses… or both, if you're a channel surfer.

Given Grand Theft Auto IV's penchant for off-the-beaten-path music, I'm very much looking forward to hearing more about the radio stations, DJs, and playlists of GTA V.

In the meantime, I though I'd put together five of my favorite tracks from Grand Theft Auto games past. This list sure as hell isn't definitive—it's just five tunes that I love, and that I will always associate with my time playing Rockstar's games. Click on, and rock out.

Fascination - David Bowie

I think it's a sax thing, but few songs conjure GTA IV for me like David Bowie's "Fascination." It always seems to come on in the evening, slinky wah-wah sax (David Sanborn, ladies and gentlemen) accompanying me as I drive across the Broker bridge into Algonquin. Bonus points to Rockstar for having Liberty Rock Radio come on every time a player hops into a helicopter. Clearly Liberty City's pilots know what they're doing.

Miles Davis - Move

I was so flippin stoked that GTA IV had a jazz station… and not just some weird approximation of 1940's b-sides or Squirrel Nut Zippers tunes, but a damned well put-together, legit playlist that focused mostly on hard-bop from the 1950's. Impossible for me to choose a favorite among them (I mean, Sonny Rollins on "St. Thomas" is one of my favorite tenor solos of all time, as of course is Trane on "Giant Steps"), but whenever Miles Davis's "Move" (from his classic "Birth of the Cool" record) comes on, I'm impressed that a tune this hip is featured in a video game. Listen for Lee Konitz's breezy alto sax solo—dude biffs the time in his first phrase. Heh.

Megadeth - Peace Sells

I don't listen to enough metal. It's a thing, like… there's just not enough time to amass the knowledge of some of my metal-head friends, so I wind up missing out on a lot of good stuff. Fortunately, Grand Theft Auto games are super good at metal. GTA IV's DLC chapter The Lost and The Damned put together a killer mix of hardcore and metal, but this Megadeth track from Vice City remains probably my favorite guitar chugger of them all. This tune just screams "blow off your next objective and go start running people over on the beach!"

Heart - Barracuda - KDST in San Andreas

I loved how eclectic San Andreas's soundtrack was—any game that features setting-appropriate gangster rap one minute, followed by a country music backwoods dirtbike race the next is cool by me. But I think that Heart's "Barracuda" is (maybe?) my favorite song from the entire game. The tune is such a "driving song," not in that it has a driving beat, but in that it's perfect for driving. The chuga-chuga guitar buildup, the sinister vibe, and of course, the fact that it's by Heart, and therefore is inarguably, objectively awesome.

Flock of Seagulls - I Ran (So Far Away)

Well, this one pretty much had to be in here, didn't it? Not for nothing: not only was it featured in the famous trailer for Vice City, "I Ran So Far" just about perfectly captures the neon-lit, pastel glitz of Vice City, which still stands as arguably the most iconic Grand Theft Auto of them all. (Note: This song is not to be confused with Loney Island's excellent tribute to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "Iran so Far." Hopping into a speedboat and riding into the sunset while Flock of Seagulls plays will always be a peak Grand Theft Auto moment.

Above is the first trailer for GTA IV. Remember that? It came out at the end of March 2007 and answered questions about the next GTA, even as it raised a bunch of new ones. It showed graphics that shamed its contemporaries, revealed Liberty City (aka New York City) as the location and introduced us to the captivating lead character Niko Bellic.

Now, we're on the verge of the next big GTA trailer, giving us the first official details of the next big game.

Next week's GTA V trailer is probably going to show where the new game is set, and we are feeling good about our reporting that it's going to be in Los Angeles or a fictional version thereof. But surely there are other questions this trailer could answer. I've got five...

1) Will the outrageousness be back? GTA: San Andreas closed out Grand Theft Auto's tenure on the PlayStation 2 with the most outrageous game in the series. If you explored enough you could find a jetpack, blow up a dam, beat people up with a sex toy, fly to a city featured in a different GTA, ride a motorcycle out of a cargo plane and more. The next GTA, the big GTA IV pulled back on the insanity and presented, at least relatively speaking, a more mature and restrained game. Which means: you could have shootouts in museums, blow up cars and even fly an attack chopper, but you weren't being that nuts about things and the writing had a new emotional gravitas that made GTA not just a great game, but a great text. The episodic additions to GTA IV first added more intense firefights (and full frontal male nudity), and then added the stealing of subway cars, the ravings lunatic rich people and playable base jumping. So the question is: does GTA V go even wilder and get back to the flavor of San Andreas? Or exceed it? Or go in some other excellent direction?

2) Can I keep my guns, please? If this gets answered in the trailer, I'll be shocked, but if there's a design decision I've long objected to with this series, it's that I lose a gun when I use up its bullets. What's the fun of keeping one bullet left in the chamber just so you can keep the arsenal stocked? Let me keep my guns, please.

3) How multiplayer will this game be? Rockstar was proud of the multiplayer in GTA IV, a mode that still pops up on the Xbox Live activity charts. It's no Call of Duty or Halo in terms of popularity, but it's stuck around as just about nothing else has. It was number 9 last month on the week Gears of War 3 came out. That's more than three years since GTA IV debuted. Rockstar's tried even harder with multiplayer in Red Dead Redemption and, unless they've had a sudden change of heart, would seem primed to do more multi for GTA V. Trailers for this series don't usually get feature-specific, but if Rockstar wants to convey how different the new game might be, a trailer that signals there multiplayer is a significant aspect would do the trick.

4) Platforms? Xbox 360, PlayStation 3... anything else? Look for logos at the end of the trailer, though, again, if the original GTA IV teaser is anything to go by, we won't see it. Still, there are theories and possibilities.

5) Why a number and not a subtitle? Rockstar has said that they put numbers on the GTAs that are an especially big deal... on the ones that change things. Would multiple playable characters justify that? Graphics beyond anything we've seen before? Something else?

You know what? I don't think the new trailer is going to answer many of those questions after all, but here's hoping. What questions would you like the new trailer to answer?

Strengthening long-standing rumors for years that the next Grand Theft Auto would be set in Los Angeles or a fictional version thereof, a source familiar with the game told Kotaku today that those rumors are true. GTA V will be set in some version of L.A., bringing the famous franchise to a place that last got the GTA treatment in the series' top-selling Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. (So much for our other dream GTA V cities.)

We're also hearing from multiple sources that the game will feature more than just one playable character. That would seem to be a natural evolution for the series. Following the release of the PlayStation 2's Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto Vice City, PSP games set in the same cities as those console games let players control a single new character apiece. Those portable games helped establish the idea that there's more than one life worth living in a Rockstar-made GTA city.

Then, following the release of Grand Theft Auto IV the series' creators at Rockstar Games allowed gamers to play as a second and then a third character in the exact same high-definition version of Liberty City. Those who bought the base game and the two downloadable episodes could choose from the GTA IV's menu whether to play as Niko Bellic, Johnny Klebitz or Luis Lopez. Each had their own lengthy, interesting and distinct playable story. A GTA V that features more than one playable hero would extend this concept further.

Back when GTA IV was being shown to press, Rockstar representatives would stress the importance of the number in the title. As successful as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were, they noted, it was the game that preceded them, GTA III that was a paradigm shift. They hoped and believed that GTA IV, by being a numbered game would have and merit some outsized influence of its own. If that is still the company's philosophy, then after Grand Theft Auto IV's un-numbered episodes, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, a numbered GTA V should again merit special attention. Shifting cities was not sufficient cause for a new numbered GTA before. A change to the series' formula, however, one that gives players more than one controllable character, would.

Rockstar has had a lot of experience with L.A., working with Team Bondi to create a mid-20th-century version of it for this year's L.A. Noire, presenting a drive-able version in Midnight Club and, most famously of all, turning it into the amazing Los Santos as one of three featured cities in GTA: San Andreas.

Rockstar Games did not respond to requests for comment about GTA V today. Should we hear them, we'll update this piece. Otherwise, look for the official trailer for the new game on November 2.

These Are the Best Cities For the Next Grand Theft Auto

Grand Theft Auto is a franchise driven by stories, with a massive cast of characters and nearly endless replayability. But the thing that most distinguishes one Grand Theft Auto from the next is Rockstar's glorious, subversive take on each of the games' settings. More »

The Huge Hardware Implications for Grand Theft Auto V and the Future of Video Games

In a year full of headlines about Apple, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, it's possible to think that the forces that shape the future of what we'll play and where we'll play it is now solely in the hands of the people who make plastic and metal boxes. More »

Grand Theft Auto is a franchise driven by stories, with a massive cast of characters and nearly endless replayability. But the thing that most distinguishes one Grand Theft Auto from the next is Rockstar's glorious, subversive take on each of the games' settings.

The cityscape of a Grand Theft Auto is often the game's most important character, shaping everything about the game from how you play it to the story that is told. It's the city that also becomes the backdrop for all of those amazing stories that the gamers create themselves through hours of exploration in vast, interactive settings. And as mulitplayer grows in importance, it will be the city that forms a backdrop for those secondary experiences and online romps.

There's a really good chance we'll get at least an idea of where Grand Theft Auto V takes place when Rockstar releases the first official trailer on Nov. 2. Until then we're left guessing, but there are some tantalizing clues and history that can make these guesses at least a little educated.

The Clues

All we have to work with officially is that Grand Theft Auto V logo, so let's take a look. The font is pure Grand Theft Auto with two exceptions:

The letter V, or Roman numeral five, looks an awful lot like the art style and font used on U.S. currency. See the fine lines that give that capital letter its green shade. The V could stand for a city name, or just the number five. The font and art style could point to something money related or—and this is a stretch—maybe that V stands for the five dollar bill (which contains no roman numeral V, but does have a picture of the Lincoln Memorial on the back).

The word five is spelled out over the V in this logo. Grand Theft Auto IV's official logo doesn't use a different font for the Roman numeral IV. Nor does it bother to spell out the number four across that numeral. Both of these lend a bit of credence to the notion that the V in Grand Theft Auto V has more meaning than just as a number. (Or it could just be an opportunity to repeat the currency theme.)

Past rumors have indicated the next Grand Theft Auto will be set in California. We even had a casting call to back it up. Thing is, we're not entirely sure that codename Rush project is really for a Grand Theft Auto game, it just sounds like it is.

The Cities

New York City: Every numbered Grand Theft Auto released, except the second , has been set in some form of New York City since the franchise's inception in 1997. Rockstar is based in New York City. New York City is home to Wall Street, protesting 99 Percenters, everyday turmoil and plenty of things worthy of interesting tales.
Odds: 3:1

Los Angeles, California: Early rumors set V in a fictional Los Angeles studded with FBI agents, hippies and swingers. And it wouldn't be too hard to expand the setting and include San Andreas, the game's take on California, for good measure. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas didn't get its own number, but it was one of the best games to hit the Playstation 2. Set in 1992, a lot has changes in the two decades since. Also, a two-decade later revisit to a infamous Grand Theft Auto setting does have its appeal.
Odds: V:1

Washington, D.C.: New York's not-so-close neighbor is rife with senatorial shenanigans, intrigue, a really bizarre city design and a vibrant culture. There's also nearby Baltimore, "the city of neighborhoods", television-adaptation worthy crime and amazing political corruption. D.C. and "Balmore" are both close enough to the city that never sleeps that Rockstar could maybe even shoehorn all three settings into one game. Let's not forget that the Treasury is based in D.C.
Odds: 20:1

Las Vegas: It's the city of sin. There's gambling, organized crime, celebrity, excess, a sparking city and amazing vistas. Also, V could stand for Vegas, not just the number five.
Odds: 50:1

London: The original Grand Theft Auto took place in the game's version of Miami, New York and San Francisco, but the two expansion packs sold for that wonderful top-down crime-spree romp were both set in London in the '60s. Rockstar North, the folks who actually create a bulk of what makes the Grand Theft Auto games, are based in relatively nearby Edinburgh, Scotland. Also, aren't we all getting more than a little sick of running around in fictionalized U.S. cities? They could even add other wonderful backdrops like Paris, Scotland and Frankfurt.
Odds: 100:1

Dallas, Fort Worth: OK, I admit it, there really isn't anything pointing to a Grand Theft Auto set in Texas, not even in the twin cities of Dallas and Forth Worth. But can you imagine just how amazing that would be? You could throw San Antonio, El Paso and Houston in for good measure and create a modern western that would blend the best of Red Dead Redemption with the best of Grand Theft Auto. Evidence? Well, none. But between the drug cartels on the nearby Mexican border and the popularity of shows like Breaking Bad, it's not entirely crazy talk.
Odds: 200:1

Miami: There's really not a lot of evidence pointing to a return to Florida. The state and almost all of its cities are prime settings for cooky, bizarre crime-laden stories, (Just ask Carl Hiaasen.) And it made for a solid outing in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Also, V could stand for Vice City. The thing is, nothing will ever beat out Miami in the '80s, so why return to the setting?
Odds: 750:1

Vancouver, Canada: Why does every Grand Theft Auto need to take place in the U.S.? Why not in one of the most "liveable" cities in the world? You don't need to set a sprawling open-world game in a violent city to make it fun. You can corrupt the city, make it violent. Also Vancouver starts with a big giant V. There is also a huge beaver mafia, which would make a worthy adversary.
Odds: 1000:1

Those are our best guesses. What are yours?

Do you have the inside scoop? Hit me up at brian@kotaku.com

The Huge Hardware Implications for Grand Theft Auto V and the Future of Video Games

In a year full of headlines about Apple, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, it's possible to think that the forces that shape the future of what we'll play and where we'll play it is now solely in the hands of the people who make plastic and metal boxes. More »

Jack Thompson, active nemesis of any video game that he believes causes real world violence, was disbarred on September 25, 2008. Website GamePolitics notes that his disbarrment kicked in Oct 25, 2008 and that, three years to the day later, we get an announcement of GTA V. Jack hates GTA.