Grand Theft Auto VI — setting and characters

Vice City lies on the east coast and is the largest city in the state, a parody of Miami that takes up its pink neon. It holds a district that follows Ocean Drive, areas such as Ocean Beach, Little Cuba and Tisha-Wocka, and a port that is the cruise capital of the world.

Port Gellhorn, on the west coast, is a seaside resort that was once sought after and has since fallen out of use, on the model of Panama City, Florida. It holds seedy motels, abandoned amusement parks and deserted commercial areas, and a new economy has nonetheless grown up there around beer, painkillers and energy drinks.

Ambrosia, at the centre of the state, is a small and deeply conservative industrial town where a sugar refinery provides the work and where a motorcycle gang has settled, on the model of the country around Lake Okeechobee and of Clewiston in particular.

The Leonida Keys form a tropical archipelago south of Vice City, reaching into the south-eastern waters of the state, on the model of the Florida Keys. The setting is paradise while the waters around it are the most dangerous in Leonida, and that is where diving takes place.

The Grassrivers are a vast marshland on the model of the Everglades, west of Vice City and across much of the south-west of the state. The wildlife there is dangerous, and alligators are not the greatest danger.

Mount Kalaga National Park occupies the northern border of the state, against a neighbouring state named Gloriana, and it is mountain country for fishing, hunting and hiking. Backwoods people and extremists also live there, out of reach of the authorities. Northern Florida, Providence Canyon State Park in Georgia and Table Rock State Park in South Carolina are its models.

Jason Duval wants an easy life, but things just keep getting harder. He grew up around grifters and crooks, joined the army to shake off his troubled teens, and then found himself in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners. Meeting Lucia could be the best or the worst thing ever to happen to him.

Lucia Caminos learned to fight from her father as soon as she could walk, and life has been coming at her swinging ever since. Fighting for her family is what landed her in the Leonida Penitentiary, which she left by sheer luck, and she has learned her lesson, only smart moves from here. More than anything she wants the good life her mother has dreamed of since they left Liberty City. She is not leaving it to chance, she is set on taking matters into her own hands, and a life with Jason could be her way out.

Brian Heder is a drug runner from the golden age of smuggling in the Keys, and he still moves product through his boat yard with Lori, his third wife. He has been in the trade long enough to leave the dirty work to others. Jason lives rent-free in one of his properties, in exchange for help with local shakedowns and for turning up now and then for Lori's sangria.

Cal Hampton, a friend of Jason's and another associate of Brian's, feels safest at home, where he listens in on coast guard traffic with a few beers to hand and a set of internet pages open in private browsing. Everything the internet says can be true, as far as he is concerned. He is at the low tide of America and happy there, and he asks nothing better than to pass his paranoia on to his friend Jason.

Raul Bautista is a seasoned bank robber, confident, charming and cunning, who hunts for talent ready to take the risks that pay the most. His recklessness raises the stakes with every job, so that his crew will sooner or later have to double down or walk away from the table, and several partners have already betrayed him.

Boobie Ike is a local Vice City legend and knows it well. He is one of the few to have turned his time in the streets into a legitimate empire of real estate, a strip club named the Jack of Hearts and a recording studio that the club pays for. He is all smiles until it is time to talk business. He might seem out for himself, but what he is most invested in is his partnership with Dre'Quan Priest and their label Only Raw Records, and all they need now is a hit.

Dre'Quan Priest was always more a hustler than a gangster, and although he dealt on the street to make ends meet, breaking into music was the goal. He books acts into Boobie's strip club, and now that he has signed Real Dimez he is setting his sights on the Vice City scene.

Real Dimez are Bae-Luxe and Roxy, a rap duo and friends since high school, who turned their time shaking down local dealers into money through rap tracks and a relentless social media presence. An early single with a local rapper, DWNPLY, took them to new heights, and five years and a great deal of trouble later they are signed to Only Raw Records.