Tommy Vercetti: Vice City's Lead and GTA's Star-Casting Era

Tommy Vercetti is the lead of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002), the first game in the 3D series whose hero talks. Rockstar gave that voice to Ray Liotta, a film actor best known for Goodfellas. This page argues that Tommy matters less as a gangster archetype than as the high point of an approach Rockstar then dropped: building the lead around a famous voice. By Dan Houser's own account, the studio decided soon after that famous voices got in the way.

At a glance

What is counted, and how

The character facts come from Rockstar's own store copy and from GameSpot's launch review. Release dates come from Rockstar press releases and Take-Two filings. Sales are Rockstar's "shipped" or "sold" floor figures ("over X million"), not exact totals. Liotta's career and his comments about the role come from SlashFilm's 2022 piece, which quotes a 2002 IGN interview we did not open ourselves.

Left out: any claim about Liotta's pay. The only account we found gives no source and no figure, so it does not meet our bar. We also leave out story beats past the first act except under the marked spoiler heading.

The North American release date differs by source. Take-Two's 10-K and GameSpot's game listing give Oct 29 2002, the day Rockstar announced the game had shipped; Rockstar's game page gives Oct 27 2002. This page counts from Oct 29.

Arithmetic for the release table: the PS2 version came out Oct 29 2002 and the PC version was dated May 13 2003, a gap of 196 days. The iOS release on Dec 6 2012 came 3,691 days after the PS2 launch, which is 10 years and 38 days. The Definitive Edition on Nov 11 2021 came 6,953 days after, or 19 years and 13 days.

The setup

Rockstar's store copy gives the first act. Tommy has just walked out of a long stretch in maximum security in Liberty City. His old boss, Sonny Forelli, and the family are nervous about having him back, so they send him to Vice City. His first deal there goes wrong: he is set up and left with no money and no merchandise, Sonny wants his money back, and biker gangs, Cuban gangsters and corrupt politicians stand in the way.

GameSpot's 2002 review adds two details that shape the character. The year is 1986, and the Forelli family values Tommy because he refused to inform on them in exchange for a lighter sentence. He is a loyal soldier dropped into a city where nobody owes him anything. In 2021 Rockstar summed the whole game up as "the story of Tommy Vercetti and his quest for revenge."

The voice, and why Rockstar moved on from stars

Houser told GameSpot in 2011 that the team "spent a lot of time on Vice City" working out how to make a player character speak in an open world. Vice City was the answer, and Liotta was the voice. GameSpot's reviewer wrote at launch that he did "a great job of bringing the character to life."

In the same interview Houser explained why Rockstar later stopped casting stars. On the PlayStation 2, he said, a famous actor could record a part in a few days and the result looked fine. Once voice and motion capture became one performance, that model broke down, and famous faces began to distract players. Houser also said that "by the end of San Andreas" the studio was getting better results from actors who were not famous. GameSpot's San Andreas review, two years after Vice City, called that game's lead actor Young Maylay "a relatively unknown rapper."

Put those statements together and Tommy sits at a hinge. He is the lead Rockstar spent its speaking-lead effort on, and by 2011 Rockstar's lead writer was explaining that the studio now used top-level actors who are "just not famous ones," with famous people mostly appearing as themselves.

SlashFilm's 2022 piece quotes Liotta's 2002 IGN interview, in which he said of the recording, "it's exhausting," and that he "was trying to go under the radar with it."

Tommy's game on every platform

This table tracks every release of Vice City that the sources here document, with the gap from the PS2 launch. It shows how long Tommy has stayed on sale.

How his game sold against GTA III

Rockstar published "over" figures for both of its first two 3D games at two points in 2004. Vice City's floor was higher both times, even though it had been on sale for a year less.

Because these are floors, the gap between the two games cannot be stated exactly, and strictly the floors do not prove which game was ahead. Taken at face value, they put Vice City ahead of the game that started the 3D series by March 2004, about 16 months after its own launch. Rockstar's February 2003 release had already called it the number-one selling video game of 2002. See /library/gta-sales-history for the full series picture.

Spoilers

GameSpot's review describes Lance Vance, played by Philip Michael Thomas of Miami Vice, as Tommy's sidekick of sorts, with both men chasing revenge for their own reasons. Rockstar's copy states the end goal of the story plainly: Tommy's answer to a city that wants him dead is to fight back and take it over himself. We do not describe the ending here.

Legacy

Tommy's legacy is twofold. In the story, he set the template for the GTA lead with an agenda of his own, a step up from a silent man with only revenge in mind (see /library/claude). In casting, he marks where the star-led approach peaked. The next lead, /library/carl-johnson, went to a rapper GameSpot called relatively unknown, and Houser's 2011 comments describe the policy in place by the time of /library/niko-bellic. The three leads of /library/michael-franklin-trevor came after that interview. For the city itself see /library/vice-city, and for the game see /library/gta-vice-city.

Trivia

• SlashFilm reports that Liotta won Best Live Action/Voice Male Performance at the 2003 G-Phoria Awards and Best Performance by a Human at the 2003 Spike Video Game Awards for the role.
• GameSpot's launch review scored Vice City 9.6, the same score it gave GTA III a year earlier.
• Rockstar's February 2003 release called Vice City the fastest-selling, highest-grossing PlayStation 2 game released to that date.
• Vice City's 10th anniversary was marked with mobile releases rather than a new game: iOS on Dec 6 2012 and Android six days later (Take-Two).

Sources

• GameSpot, Jeff Gerstmann, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Review, Oct 28 2002 (read via Wayback Machine)
• Steam store page, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
• Rockstar Games via Take-Two IR, Rockstar Games Ships Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Oct 29 2002
• Rockstar Games via Take-Two IR, Rockstar Games Announces Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for PC, Feb 18 2003
• Take-Two Interactive, Form 8-K exhibit 99.1, May 29 2003
• Rockstar Games via Take-Two IR, Rockstar Games Announces Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Mar 1 2004
• Rockstar Games via Take-Two IR, Rockstar Games Ships Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for PlayStation2, Oct 25 2004
• Take-Two Interactive, Form 8-K exhibit 99.1, Feb 5 2013
• Rockstar Games via Business Wire, Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition Now Available, Nov 11 2021 (read via Wayback Machine)
• GameSpot, Shaun McInnis, Dan Houser Opens Up About Grand Theft Auto III, Oct 21 2011 (read via Wayback Machine)
• Take-Two Interactive, Form 10-K, fiscal 2002, filed Dec 23 2002
• Rockstar Games, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City game page
• SlashFilm, BJ Colangelo, Let's Talk About Ray Liotta's Most Underrated Performance, May 30 2022
• GameSpot, Jeff Gerstmann, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Review, Oct 25 2004 (read via Wayback Machine)