GTA 6's Jason may be the series' best character yet, if his clothes are anything to go by

Published Jul 21, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT

Grand Theft Auto's relationship with fashion up to this point has been a sorry one. GTA 3 sets you loose in a single outfit — a manky puffer jacket and some green cargo pants. Vice City gives you options, but they kinda suck. Tommy's default floral print shirt looks sleazy, but his casual outfit is fairly decent, a nice, unstained T-shirt with a normal-looking pair of jeans. The rest seem like jokes, last-minute costumes you'd grab on sale at a party store if you wanted to dress like a cheap cop or a country lad. GTA 4's clothing options are just different versions of jackets and fatigues.

Image: Rockstar Games

Don't even get me started on GTA 5. It annoys me on multiple levels. For one thing, this take on streetwear went out of fashion in the '90s. I can sort of understand GTA 3 and Vice City being late to the party, since Rockstar launched both in the early 2000s. No such excuses for the later games, though.

Shoving outdated fashion at you is hardly a rarity in video games. Just look at The Sims 4. No, the bigger issue for me is what it says about culture and how it's held GTA back for so long. GTA is about the little guy trying to make it big, the one with the cards stacked against him, who's got it rough, who doesn't come from a privileged background. Naturally, Rockstar says, that little guy looks grungy and dresses like shit and ends up being a vulgarian once he does get money. Poor people, amirite? Never mind the fact you can get a whole, nice wardrobe of varying styles from a thrift shop for $10-15. But I dunno, maybe Vice City and its ilk don't have those. "Making it" in GTA 5 gives you access to suits that look closer to what National Lampoon's Cousin Eddie wears than anything resembling success. Money buys a lot, but taste clearly isn't in the shopping cart.

Maybe that's what success looks like for these guys. But really? Close to a dozen men across a decade and several games all have the same outlook on life, the same goals, the same lifestyles? I get it. Rockstar wants to satirize the false and impossible ideals of American culture, ideals that animate people and shape their lives. And in striving for the same thing, these men end up recreating the system that oppressed them, yadda yadda. The satire might've seemed pointed 20 years ago — though it always gets lost in the so-called thrill of being "bad" — but it's long past time for something fresh.

Image: Rockstar Games/Take-Two Interactive

Enter Jason Duval, a man with enough self-respect and ambition to go around wearing more than just a dirty tank top and cargo shorts. (He does wear those, sometimes, when he feels like it.) But when Rockstar opened his closet for the pre-order info dump, we got to see different versions of the man. He's got nice chinos, subtle floral prints, and understated button-downs worn stylishly over T-shirts. His vintage Vice City fit makes him look like the star of an '80s crime show, not the culprit. He's a man who knows what good streetwear looks like, and he styles his hair to fit whatever new identity he's trying on. Jason's vision of what a reinvented version of himself might look like isn't constrained by class or background. It's unlimited. Very GTA of him.

Or that's what I'm hoping for, anyway. Maybe Jason's just a well-dressed version of Tommy, Trevor, Niko, and all the others who came before. Who knows? Rockstar's certainly in no hurry to give any info about GTA 6's story. But whatever his deal is, at least he's got nice clothes and not the usual 50 shades of shit.