The internet's GTA 6 takes are so bad they brought Shitty Gamer Takes back from death

Carl "CJ" Johnson saying, "Ah shit, here we go again."
(Image credit: Take-Two Interactive)

Rumor has it that Grand Theft Auto 6 will let you play as a woman. And a man. According to a report published by Bloomberg, the protagonists will be "a pair of leading characters in a story influenced by bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde" and the woman will be "Latina". The internet responded to this in its usual calm and considered manner. Ha ha, no, people lost their damn minds.

The Twitter account Shitty Gamer Takes used to bless/curse us by uncovering the and highlighting videogame discourse at its worst—speedrunning demonstrates a lacking work ethic being just one memorable example. After six months of dormancy, it was revived for this special occasion because there are people out there convinced that if the next Grand Theft Auto does include a playable woman it will be "GTA 6, The Woke Edition" and that Rockstar has "ruined gta with this woke stuff". Which seems like a heck of a reach based on what is, again, merely a rumor.

While there's terrible discourse in every online community (writer Twitter is a sewer), there is something special about the leap a classic Gamer take delivers. Take the response that begins, "I'm expecting there won't be any female prostitutes or strip clubs, and the story will say that vehicles are not privately owned so technically you are not committing GTA." The gigantic stretch from "if GTA 6 lets you be a woman it won't have strip clubs" to "also cars won't be private property" is what transforms an ordinary bad opinion into the ideal Shitty Gamer Take. 

You can play a woman in GTA Online and last time I checked it hadn't gone full communism with regards to vehicle ownership, and was as crass as ever. And let's not forget Katie, Mikki, Divine, and Ulrika, the four women among the portraits you could select in the very first Grand Theft Auto. If anything, a new GTA having both male and female protagonists would be bringing the series back to its roots.

Given that there won't be any more major updates for Red Dead Online, and over 220 job listings went up on Rockstar's careers page last month, it does seem like work on GTA 6 is ramping up in earnest. Those extra staff will be needed if the other part of Bloomberg's report is true, which suggested that GTA 6 will be released in a live-service fashion like Destiny. That seems like a far more concerning idea to me than the possibility you might have to briefly play a woman in some of the story missions.

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Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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