Some people (some dude or dudes called supererogatory) have decided that they cannot wait until the next Grand Theft Auto is released and have decided to do some snooping. This is euphemistically called journalism. I prefer snooping, not because I want to pass some sort of moral judgment, but because journalism is a terrible word. Where is the journal?

Since the Grand Theft Auto franchise has a lot of fans, there are all kinds of crazy rumors being spread and speculation is rampant. This is me subtly hinting that everything said from here on should be taken with a grain of salt.

Analyst Michael Pachter has surmised that the next Grand Theft Auto would be released by January of 2012 due to the way that contracts are set up with key players at Rockstar.

The aforementioned "supererogatory" did some homework and discovered that Take-Two is working on a project titled "Rush" (considered a codename for the next Grand Theft Auto), and even managed to dig up a casting sheet with the following characters listed:

• Annoying, wise cracking, highly successful FBI agent. In great shape. Does triathlons, drinks low cal beer, but still has a sense of humor.
• Young Mexican American FBI agent, caught between a few mob bosses. Very clean cut
• Moronic, almost inbred and creepy white trash hillbilly. Very naïve but in a creepy 'it's only incest sort of way'
• Welsh monk / cult leader / yoga teacher – 50, very lithe, very into exploring your personal tension through gripping massage. Needs Welsh accent.
• Neurotic soccer mom, home maker, 48, anxious and addled on pain killers.
• Swinger, and mellow Californian divorcee. 45. Ugly but comfortable with self.
• Weed evangelist, guy who started smoking at 30, and is now a leading proponent of marijuana's fantastic properties. White, awkward.
• Publicist for an actress known as America's newest sweetheart who just so happens to love animals, orphans, drugs and sex. He's always trying to hide her latest indiscretion.

Any and all of which would be perfectly at home in a GTA title.

Lastly, there has been some discussion on the location of the next Grand Theft Auto. While people have talked about Rio de Janeiro, but that rumor has been around since before Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It has been claimed that Rockstar is researching Hollywood, and that area will serve as the backdrop to the next title. Seems reasonable to me for a number of reasons.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest that this title might not be called Grand Theft Auto V. Everybody referred to Vice City as Grand Theft Auto IV before it was revealed that it wasn't, and I think something similar is going on here. For starters, GTA IV was set in the same location as GTA 3 (Liberty City), only with a more accurate representation of the corresponding real life location (NYC). Miami isn't a great location for this kind of sandbox game since it happens to be nearly entirely flat, and the new features added in Vice City as well as the thematic issues raised were already explored in Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. San Andreas was extraordinarily popular, and the location exists in universe and Hollywood even has its own allegory (Vinewood). I would imagine that the next title will include some area of San Andreas (likely Los Santos) only with a greater attention to real life details, and will likely have a similar relationship to Grand Theft Auto IV that San Andreas did with GTA 3. I would be shocked if a different game engine was used.

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