Lucia Caminos

Lucia's the first woman Rockstar has written as a fully voiced lead in a mainline Grand Theft Auto. The first trailer introduces her walking out of custody and picking things straight back up with Jason.

Prison, and the ankle monitor after it

The launch trailer on 15 October opens with Lucia calling Jason from prison. That fits everything Rockstar's shown of her since the first trailer put her in a jumpsuit. Later in the same trailer, during a shower scene, the camera hangs on an ankle monitor.

An electronic tag usually means supervised release: she's out, and the state knows where she is. Rockstar hasn't said whether that turns into a mechanic, like an area she can't leave, or stays part of the story, and nothing shown so far settles it either way.

Lucia comes from Liberty City

Lucia isn't from Leonida. Rockstar writer Alexa D'Agostino, interviewed for issue 27 of LOVE magazine (it hit newsstands on 5 October), gives her hometown as Liberty City, the series' version of New York. TweakTown's report on the interview says D'Agostino drew on her own mother, an immigrant who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, close to where Lucia's fictional hometown would sit. We haven't seen the print text, so we're crediting this to the interview as reported and not quoting it.

Rockstar had already written the link down itself. Her official biography is the one place the studio connects Liberty City to this game, and it says her family came from there (our piece on the cut Liberty City expansion goes into it). So the city's Rockstar's own detail. The interview just adds the personal side of where it came from.

It lines up with how Rockstar's writers talk about her, as somebody driven by wanting a better life. It also makes her an outsider in Leonida, which Jason, who already works the Keys, isn't. And it links the new game back to Grand Theft Auto IV's city without bringing any of its characters along. Rockstar hasn't said whether Liberty City shows up as anything more than a line of backstory.

She's always the one pushing. Jason comes across as somebody managing his situation, and Lucia comes across as somebody trying to change hers. In the trailers she gets the lines that commit the pair to something, and he gets the ones that hedge.

The phone shop job and the saferoom texts

The Extended Look backs that up. About 18 minutes in, Lucia walks into Zeke's Gadgets, a phone repair shop in a run-down strip mall, with a pistol held behind her back (our frame read of the strip mall). Later, at the penthouse job, she's the one texting Jason what's waiting for them: a man called Czr in a saferoom, ten or more guys, automatic weapons, explosives, and the line that they sound military (the texts, read at 4K). She's scouting and he's walking in on her information.

The NBA TV ad on 20 October stretched one launch trailer shot out further, and it's Lucia again, jumping from a moving truck onto a plane's landing gear. Kotaku and GameSpot both reported the longer cut (what the TV ad changed).

Twenty-five years to get a female lead

Women have been in Grand Theft Auto from the start, but almost never behind the wheel of the story. The 3D era gave us Catalina, Misty and a long line of girlfriends, handlers and villains, all written from the outside. Grand Theft Auto Online has let players build female avatars since 2013. An avatar isn't a character, though. It's got no script, no history and nothing to say.

Lucia's the first time the series has put a written, performed woman at the centre of a mainline story. We'd rather just say that plainly. It took twenty-five years, and it changes what kinds of scenes the game can actually play.

Bonnie and Clyde

Rockstar's leaned on the comparison, and the trailers back it up. The two are introduced as a couple doing crimes together, not as work colleagues, and the character switch screen puts a heart between their two portraits where you might expect a skill bar.

The obvious risk is that Bonnie and Clyde stories usually end up being about the man, with a woman along for the ride. Nothing shown so far plays it that way, and Lucia gets as much screen time in the marketing as Jason does.

That heart has a scale behind it, according to Edge's 29 October cover feature on a Rockstar demo. The magazine reports the pair's closeness is tracked on four points and goes up with time spent together outside missions, like beach walks, bike rides and drives. Rockstar hasn't described it in its own material yet.

Her screenshots show off the customisation

A lot of the game's customisation shows up in her shots: different haircuts, piercings, tattoo work, layered clothing including shirts tied at the waist, and jewellery that changes from one shot to the next. Rockstar has usually shown off its appearance systems on whichever character has the most looks, and here that's Lucia.

One shot tells you more than the others. In the check cashing screenshot her pistol has tape wrapped round the grip and a sticker stuck on the body. That's the strongest hint yet that weapon condition is actually tracked and isn't only there for looks.

One thing to ignore: a TikTok clip of Lucia browsing a clothes shop has been going round as real gameplay. It isn't from Rockstar, and it looks fake or AI-made (our scam warning has more on the fakes doing the rounds before launch).

What isn't known

Nobody's said what she was locked up for, even after the launch trailer's prison call. We also don't know when or why she left Liberty City, or whether the ankle monitor limits where she can go while you're playing. Her voice actor hasn't been named either, since Rockstar hasn't published a cast list. The trailers hint at a history with Jason from before the game starts, but they don't fill any of it in. Nobody's said who Czr is, either, the man in the saferoom her texts warn Jason about.