GTA 6’s Map Is Officially Twice as Large as GTA 5, and Northern Leonida Is Packed

Aaron Garbut, co-studio head of Rockstar North and the art director behind every GTA since 2001, gives Game Informer the figure the community has argued about for three years: Leonida is “the biggest map Rockstar has ever created by some degree”, twice as large as GTA 5, and more dense, detailed and interactive. It is also, notably, his first interview. Until now the best available number was the fan-mapping estimate of roughly 2 to 2.5 times GTA 5, tracked in our leaks guide; the official figure lands at the bottom of that range and retires the argument.

Garbut’s stronger claim is about depth rather than area: “We obsessed about every part, rooftops, alleys, the internals, and everything in between to the point we hit a critical mass with the number of our interiors, and you start to feel the buildings are more real inside and out.” He calls the result a cohesive whole with handcrafted quality to every bit. Our interiors guide counts what has been shown so far, and this quote reframes it: enterable space is a headline feature this time, not a garnish.

The article walks through the state’s six primary regions with official one-line characters. Vice City carries Miami’s glamour and congestion, deco architecture, scenic beaches and a bustling cruise port. The Leonida Keys are the island chain where Jason starts out. The Grassrivers is the Everglades equivalent, an expansive biodiverse wetland with reptilian predators and questionably friendly, probably armed outdoorsmen. Port Gellhorn represents Florida’s struggling tourist traps, littered with abandoned attractions, cheap motels and derelict strip malls. Ambrosia gets the strongest line: the heart of Leonida, a symbol of American industry defined by factories and refineries, with a local biker gang calling the shots. And Mount Kalaga National Park sits on Leonida’s northern border, representing the culture of the Florida-Georgia line, or in-universe, the Leonida-Gloriana line.

Paul MacPherson, senior vice president of environment art, delivers the paragraph that launched a hundred wishlists. Between the northern towns, Rockstar built vast countryside expanses holding ATV trails, “a drunken mud park party for every kind of two and four-wheel offering you can imagine”, destruction derby chaos races on floodlit oval tracks at night, mountain bike trails through dense treeline, livestock and agricultural farms, high-end ranches, a luxury private golf course, a set of beaches inspired by Blackrock and Boneyard near Jacksonville, MX bikes on coastal sand dunes and bass fishing in a Spanish moss draped lake. He also cites lumber industry and deforesting zones as gameplay spaces, and gated communities built around private jet ownership, complete with personal landing strips, a detail our airports guide will be watching.

Asked directly about central Florida, home of the Orlando theme parks and the Space Coast, MacPherson gives a careful non-answer: the team constantly evaluates landscapes, landmarks and towns to distil “a list down to what best works and serves the game’s needs”, so “while we may not have those exact locations, everything we have is geared to getting the full Florida experience.” Read plainly: no Disney World and no Kennedy Space Center as such, a question our space centre guide has chased since the first leak wave.

The research behind all of it was boots on the ground. Rupert Humphries, senior vice president of narrative, describes riding around areas at night with ex-cops, visiting strip clubs and nightclubs, and spending time on the beach, in the Everglades and down in the Keys. MacPherson’s team examined Panama City, Jacksonville, Ocala and the small rural towns between them. The story’s job, Humphries adds, is to bring players around the map in a way that feels authentic, through a state where rich and poor live next door and “crime and corruption is the thread that pulls everyone together.”