GTA 6 map details finally arrive from an official source, and it sounds massive

With GTA 6’s release just around the corner, fans have been desperate to know the scale of the game’s map and what they can expect from Rockstar’s fictional state, Leonida.

And after much theory and speculation, even extending to rumours that a painting added in a GTA Online update was GTA 6’s map, details have finally arrived from a legitimate source – Rockstar themselves.

According to a preview featured in Game Informer, Rockstar finally gave us more glimpses into the size of the map and its features – including a new weather system.

Rockstar Games's head of development and co-studio head, Aaron Garbut, told Game Informer that GTA 6’s Leonida is the largest map the studio has ever created "by some degree".

Garbut shared further details, hinting that the map will dwarf the size of GTA 5.

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"This new world is different. We obsessed about every part – the rooftops, the alleys, the internals and everything in between to the point we hit a critical mass with the numbers of our interiors, and you start to feel the buildings are more real inside and out.

"This world is a cohesive whole with the density of content and a hand-crafted quality to every bit."

Leonida is based on Florida and will have six different regions, including the iconic Vice City. Inspired by Miami, Vice City will act as the heart of urban life in the game.

Other regions include Mount Kalaga National Park, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, the Leonida Keys and Ambrosia, most of which we saw glimpses of in GTA 6: An Extended Look which premiered on Netflix last month.

And with all these different regions tied together, a variety of activities including kayaking, base jumping, scuba diving and much more will be available to players to try out.

Alongside the sheer scale of the map, Leonida will feature a whole new weather system to accurately reflect Florida weather.

In Game Informer’s preview, Rockstar’s vice president of art for light and rendering, Owen Shepherd, stated: "We have re-engineered our weather system to make everything much more localised and persistent, and really wanted the world to feel dynamically solid and achieve a sense of scale we haven’t felt before."

For a map of this size, it feels only natural that the weather system would be equally as ambitious, and it’s clear Rockstar has left no stone unturned.

However, since from the trailers we have only seen Leonida’s sunny skies, it’ll be great to experience more advanced weather like tropical storms and hurricanes, and whether this will impact any part of gameplay or story is another question all together.

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