Tommy Vercetti is the GTA series's first voiced protagonist — and Ray Liotta's only video-game lead role. Here's the full Tommy primer: backstory, arc, and legacy.
Lance Vance — voiced by Philip Michael Thomas — is Tommy's mid-game ally and third-act betrayer. Here's the full Lance arc and why it still works.
Vice City introduced the buyable-property system that defined the modern GTA. Here's what each property does, how much it earns, and the order to acquire them in.
PS5 & Xbox Series X|S launch — PC delayed beyond. Stay current with our daily intel.
GTA V's three-protagonist system lets you switch between Michael, Trevor, and Franklin. Here's who each one is, what makes each playstyle distinct, and which one to lead with.
Tommy Vercetti is the first voiced protagonist in mainline Grand Theft Auto — voiced by Ray Liotta in his only video-game lead role. The character anchored Vice City's 2002 release, set the template for every GTA protagonist since, and remained the series's highest-profile celebrity-voiced character until Samuel L. Jackson took on Tenpenny in San Andreas.
Below: Tommy's backstory, his Vice City arc, and why the character still matters.
Tommy Vercetti was a made man for the Forelli crime family in Liberty City during the early 1980s. The character is positioned as a serious enforcer — until a 1971 assassination job (the so-called "Harwood incident") goes wrong. Tommy kills 11 people in self-defense after walking into an ambush, earns the nickname "The Harwood Butcher," and is sentenced to 15 years in prison by Sonny Forelli for the violence.
Tommy serves the full 15 years in Liberty City State Penitentiary. The Vice City story opens shortly after his release — Sonny sends him to Vice City to run a drug deal, ostensibly as a "fresh start" but actually to keep him out of Liberty City's politics.
Tommy's Vice City arc is essentially Tommy rebuilding an empire from nothing, then declaring independence from Sonny Forelli. The three acts:
The campaign closes with Tommy as the undisputed Vice City crime boss — a role the post-game free-roam preserves but doesn't develop further.
Ray Liotta voiced Tommy across approximately 3,000 lines of dialogue in 2002. The performance is widely cited as one of the best video-game voice acting jobs of the era. Liotta brought:
Liotta reportedly was paid relatively little for the role compared to his film work and was famously frustrated about it for years afterward (his interviews on the topic are widely circulated). Despite the dispute, Liotta did not return for any Vice City Stories or other Rockstar follow-up. Vice City remains his only Grand Theft Auto credit.
Liotta died in 2022 at age 67. The Vice City performance is one of the works most-cited in his obituaries.
Every GTA protagonist after Tommy owes him something:
The "voiced lead with a real internal life" template that Tommy established is the universal default in GTA now. Claude (silent, GTA III) is the historical anomaly; Tommy is the template.
Vice City Stories (2006, set in 1984) and Liberty City Stories (2005, set in 1998) reference Tommy without showing him. Notable: Liberty City Stories explicitly mentions "the Harwood incident" and Tommy's prison sentence as backstory, confirming the canonical timeline. Tommy doesn't return as a playable or speaking character in any other GTA.
Tommy's Vice City arc remains one of the strongest single-protagonist campaigns in the series. The reasons:
For the broader Vice City story context, see Why Vice City Still Rules, 22 Years On and the Vice City game hub.
