Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was a foundational game for many of us. It took the formula of GTA3, refined it and took it to a much more evocative open world, with many more possibilities and a richer and more interesting story than its predecessor. Today it may pale in terms of extension and options to what would later Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but for some Vice City is still the best city in which you can spend a GTA. Neither Lo Santos nor San Andreas. Vice City has everything we can look for. Beach. Neon lights. History. And the feeling that at any moment a shootout is going to start with a medium-sized tank that nobody knows where it came from.
So, that everything points to the fact that in GTA 6 we will return to Vice City is great news. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve visited the greatest city of them all and we really want to see how it’s evolved in all this time. Which places are still standing, which ones aren’t, and how the whole city has changed in the process. That’s why we’re going to talk about the six iconic places in the city that we’d love to see again in the upcoming GTA 6. Six places that, in one way or another, we want back because they are a significant part of previous GTAs. Of the experience that has marked an entire generation and that has made us love Vice City above any of the other two cities.
Vercetti Mansion
Formerly belonging to mobster Ricardo Diaz, Vercetti’s Mansion is one of our first big hits, an incredible homage to The Price of Power, and it’s also the first of the game’s residences that make us feel like we’ve actually entered to compete in Vice City’s mob boss rat race. Something that will be confirmed in all the missions involving the mansion, including the mission that definitively closes the game.
That’s why it should come back. It’s an iconic place. Should it have a central place in the game? No. But at least one mission should reference what happened there, it should talk about Vercetti, about Diaz, about everything we did and everything that happened around that mansion. We don’t even need to shoot up in it to make it a direct shot at our nostalgia. It is enough to be there, to see how it has changed and, above all, to see how it has not changed and how everything that happened there is remembered. Knowing that the blood that stained our hands has not yet left the memory of the inhabitants of Vice City is enough, even if there is no trace of the blood we spilled within its walls.
Malibu Club
The most fashionable club in the year 86. The place where the richest to the poorest went. One of the most valuable properties we could buy. Also a reference to The Price of Power and, unlike The Pole Position Club, a place that can hardly be considered problematic today.
In this case, the easy thing to do is for it to come back either as a club in decline or as a club that has had to reinvent itself into something delusional. In either case, that’s the spirit of the GTAs and the fate of an 80s club like this one. If it has survived this many years, it can’t possibly have done so without it being at the cost of either becoming a tourist trap or the base for some kind of gang. In either case, it’s the perfect place for a few side missions.
Sunshine Autos
Speaking of places that couldn’t possibly survive the passage of time, Sunshine Autos barely managed to hold its own in the 80s enough to make it to the present day. And that’s just fine. This Little Havana-based car store was an inexpensive property to own and was relatively profitable. So what if it has managed to survive all this time?
Maybe Sunshine Autos managed to thrive. Maybe now there’s a Sunshine Autos in every area, in spectacular two-story buildings, very flashy, with some kind of ridiculous mascot. That would be perfect. A car showroom store that was used to sell stolen cars could thrive over the decades to become a legitimate chain, known to everyone in the Vice City region. All in all, it’s not as if the stolen car dealing business would ever decline.
Escobar International Airport
If there’s one place where it’s easy for everything to go wrong in GTA, it’s at an airport. Escobar International Airport is no exception. With three terminals, a surprisingly large size even by the standards of the most recent GTAs, and some of the most tense missions in GTA: Vice City forcing us to have to get to it or have to go through it in one way or another, this airport is probably the most mythical of all the airports in GTA. Not only because its name is probably a reference to the Mexican drug lord Pablo Escobar.
The reasons for me to come back is that we want missions at the airport. They may have made a new airport and it is now abandoned or semi-abandoned. It may now have several more terminals. In any case, we want to return to Escobar International Airport and once again have to travel against the clock to it while being chased halfway across the island to reminisce about those memorable times in the eighties.
Prawn Island
Located in north-central Vice City, it is a very small island where we can find an industrial complex, the InterGlobal Films studio and three basically abandoned mansions. In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, which takes place two years earlier, this was a thriving and lively area. And that’s the route they should take for GTA 6.
When we return, Prawn Island should be the place to smell the money. A place of passage where it is inevitable to see the mansions, fully restored, perhaps now with a whole pseudo-military apparatus protecting it from people who might even want to approach its gardens. Because why would they leave unoccupied building land by the sea after it has been half-abandoned? It’s the perfect place to rebuild mansions and turn it into a place that costs lots and lots of money. Because besides, in GTAs, where there’s a lot of money there are also interesting missions, so there’s no excuse not to do it.
Ocean View Hotel
If there is one memorable place in Vice City, it is the Ocean View Hotel. This is where it all began. It’s Tommy Vercetti’s first retreat, as well as an iconic, Art Deco building, with luminous colors and filigree that reinforce the idea that this is an ’80s building. It couldn’t be from any other era, nor would it make sense for it to be. It’s a place we know well, it’s a place we need to return to and it would be a missed opportunity if we never heard from it again.
That doesn’t mean we have to go back to see it at its best. It is an old hotel, in a city driven by money and corruption, that has gone through at least one terrible time of gang warfare. It would be absolutely normal if it is now an abandoned dungeon where the worst of the worst gather, if the hotel is still functioning but only junkies and prostitutes live there, or if it is still the same, but it is just another tourist trap. Because that’s the thing about nostalgia. The easiest thing to do is to use it to shear those who cling to it as if happiness resides there. And if there’s one thing GTA 6 has to do in its return to Vice City, it’s to hit us with all its might with that idea.
