Following Grand Theft Auto V's 2013 release, Rockstar North then-president Leslie Benzies said the company had "some ideas" for the series' next entry. In 2018, The Know reported the game, code-named Project Americas, would be set primarily in Vice City and partly in South America with a female protagonist. In 2020, Kotaku's Jason Schreier reported the game was "early in development" as "a moderately sized release" that would expand over time, to avoid the developer crunch of its predecessors. In 2021, journalist Tom Henderson claimed the game's map could evolve akin to Fortnite Battle Royale. Writing for Bloomberg News in 2022, Schreier reported the game entered development in 2014 and would feature two protagonists influenced by Bonnie and Clyde, including a Latina woman, and claimed the developers were cautiously subverting the series' trend of joking about marginalised groups.