GTA 6 in Game Informer: Hurricanes, 170+ Species, and a Map Twice GTA V's

Game Informer's September 29 cover story is Rockstar's most detailed look at Leonida since the Extended Look. It brings tropical storms and hurricanes, a weather system Rockstar says it re-engineered for this game, more than 170 animal species, the six regions in detail, a long list of activities — and a map-size figure attributed to Rockstar North co-studio head Aaron Garbut: about twice the size of GTA V's map.

That last number matters more than it looks. The figure most coverage had been using — Leonida as three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's map — never came from Rockstar on the record. This site called it confirmed. It was not, and this is where we correct it.

What's in it

What	Detail	Source
Weather	Re-engineered system; localized, persistent storms; tropical storms and hurricanes	Owen Shepherd, Rockstar's VP of art for lighting and rendering
Wildlife	170+ species, including 60-plus types of bird and 30-plus land mammals; a Rare, Discoverable and Legendary tracking system	Game Informer's feature
Map	About twice the size of GTA V's	Attributed to Aaron Garbut
Regions	Vice City, Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia, Mount Kalaga National Park	Rockstar — named in May 2025, detailed in the feature
Research	Research into Panama City, Jacksonville, Ocala and rural towns	Paul MacPherson, Rockstar's VP of environment art
Activities	Base jumping, billiards, gyms, kayaking, mini golf, scuba diving, street and off-road racing, zoos, airboats, jet skis	Game Informer's feature

How we are treating the sourcing

Confirmed. This feature was produced with Rockstar — written by Game Informer's Marcus Stewart from interviews with named Rockstar leads and published alongside official screenshots. That makes it a sanctioned disclosure, not a hands-off preview impression, and we treat what it states as confirmed in the same way we treat the Newswire.

Where a detail appears only as the magazine's own paraphrase rather than a Rockstar quote, we say so. That distinction turns out to matter for exactly one number in this story.

Weather: re-engineered, and it gets violent

Confirmed. Owen Shepherd, Rockstar's vice president of art for lighting and rendering, told Game Informer that the studio rebuilt its weather system for this game:

We have re-engineered our weather system to make everything much more localized and persistent, and really wanted the world to feel dynamically solid and achieve a sense of scale we haven't felt before.

In practice that means storms you can see from a distance while you stand in the sun, and puddles that stay wet after the rain moves on — Game Informer even mentions rainbows after a fresh shower. And Florida's worst weather is in. Shepherd, on a storm at full strength: "heavy clouds, strong winds, dense atmospherics, and a lot of rain combine so that everything is dripping wet, water is gushing off roof edges and lampposts, thunder rumbles, and flashes of lightning light up the clouds dramatically."

What the feature does not say is how often hurricanes hit or whether they change anything beyond the view. Game Informer is explicit that it does not know how the bigger storms affect gameplay or the story. Treat any claim that hurricanes cancel missions or flood districts as speculation until Rockstar says so.

Wildlife: more than 170 species

Confirmed. Leonida has more than 170 animal species across land, air and sea, several of them new to Rockstar games. Florida's natives are there — flamingos, manatees, pelicans, alligators, plus sharks, rays, turtles and jellyfish offshore — and so are its invasive species: green iguanas, cane toads, feral cats and rhesus macaques.

Rockstar has built new fur and feather rendering for them, and a tracking system that classes some animals as Rare, Discoverable or Legendary, with the identities of the legendary ones kept secret. The work builds on Red Dead Redemption 2's wildlife systems.

The feature does not say whether Leonida's animals can be hunted. Red Dead 2's could; that is not the same thing as GTA 6 confirming it.

Six regions, and a story that won't take you everywhere

Confirmed. Leonida has six regions: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga National Park. Rockstar named all six in May 2025; the feature adds detail on each, drawing on the research Paul MacPherson describes into Panama City, Jacksonville, Ocala and small rural towns.

Garbut calls the state "a cohesive whole with the density of content and a hand-crafted quality to every bit," and says the team "obsessed about every part." And Rupert Humphries, Rockstar's senior vice president of narrative, sets expectations plainly:

We don't have time to take you everywhere, but we want you to be able to explore and get a feel for most [of] the places, cultures, and vibes.

He was answering whether Leonida includes counterparts to Florida's biggest attractions, such as its theme parks and the Space Coast, and Rockstar left that question open. The broader point is the clearer one: the story tours Leonida but does not exhaust it, which is the plainest official signal yet that exploring off the critical path is the point.

A correction here, too. Our Leonida map page and feature ledger described the sixth region as "an unnamed western interior." Rockstar named it Ambrosia in May 2025 — our own Trailer 2 page lists it — so both pages contradicted the site. Fixed, along with Rockstar's spelling of Grassrivers.

The map-size number, and our correction

Confirmed: about twice the size of GTA V's map. Game Informer's feature attributes the comparison to Garbut. It appears as the magazine's paraphrase of what he told them rather than a verbatim quote, but it is attributed to a named Rockstar lead in a sanctioned interview, and that is enough to rate it confirmed.

Rumored: about three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's. This is the number most outlets had been running since August, and so had we. It came from YouTuber TGG relaying what Rockstar developers told invited creators at the hands-off Rockstar North preview — "indirectly," as Vice put it at the time, "rather than from an official press release or direct Rockstar statement."

That is the same route as Rob Nelson's 30 FPS remark, which we rate rumored. We applied a stricter standard to the frame rate than to the map, called the map figure confirmed, and attributed it to the Extended Look broadcast. Both of those were wrong.

Are the two figures consistent? Only if Red Dead 2's map is about two-thirds the size of GTA V's, and fan measurements of both maps disagree. So we are not converting either comparison into square miles.

While tracing that figure, we found two more mis-attributions. The Extended Look was a single broadcast, but the numbers we attached to it came from three places:

• The broadcast itself — the rebuilt six-star Wanted system, the scale of the world, all captured in-game.
• A New York Times interview published the same day. Rob Nelson told the Times that his own playthrough, finished in February, took about 80 hours — including "some optional goals with narrative ramifications." It is real and on the record, but it is one developer's run, not a main-story length, and we had been describing it as "an ~80-hour main story." Garbut's figure of more than 600,000 NPC animations came from the same interview; that one we had right, just mis-sourced.
• Creators relaying the private preview — the "3× Red Dead 2" comparison.

We had collapsed all three into one source. They are now separated on every page that repeated them.

What we still don't know

• How often hurricanes hit, and whether they affect missions or the story.
• Whether animals can be hunted.
• The map's size in square miles. Rockstar has given comparisons, never a figure.
• How deep the activities go — which are full systems and which are one-off diversions.

What this changes on this site

• The Extended Look breakdown — correction note; each figure re-attributed to its real source.
• The confirmed-facts ledger — the map figure replaced with Rockstar's on-record comparison, and the 80 hours described as what it is.
• The feature ledger — two map figures at their true status; weather and wildlife move out of the leaked column into confirmed; Ambrosia named.
• The Leonida map breakdown and the map speculation page — the same corrections.
• The file-size tracker and the Trailer 3 page — one line each.

The countdown runs to November 19.