GTA 6 map is about twice the size of GTA 5's, Rockstar says

Rockstar Games has finally given a sense of how big Leonida is. In the cover story for Edge issue 430, Rockstar North's Aaron Garbut and Rob Nelson said GTA 6's map is about twice the size of GTA 5's and about three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's, according to IGN Brasil. Rockstar also told GamesRadar+ that the map "is nearly as large as the playable maps of GTAIV, GTAV and RDR2 combined." You may also see a claim that driving across Leonida takes 35 minutes. That number did not come from Rockstar, and nobody has verified it.

Vice City alone is bigger than Los Santos

Rockstar didn't give a figure in square kilometres. It compared Leonida to its own earlier maps instead. IGN Brasil reports that Nelson said Vice City on its own is twice the size of Los Santos. He also said that Vice City with its suburbs is eleven times bigger than Los Santos and the area around it.

The city is only part of the map. IGN Brasil lists Everglades-style wetlands, tourist beaches, island chains connected by long road bridges, and farmland. You can travel all of it by land, sea or air.

Fans saw this coming. Community mapping projects built on leaked development footage had predicted a huge map years ago, and Rockstar's comparisons now back them up.

Big, but also dense

A large map can still feel empty. Plenty of GTA 5 players found much of Blaine County quiet once the story was done. Garbut told Edge that Rockstar worked to avoid that this time. He said GTA 6 has "an order of magnitude more interiors" than earlier games in the series, GTA 5 included.

"You can go anywhere, any random location, and so many people have thought about that location," Garbut said, as quoted by GamesRadar+. He added that, after years of working on the game, he still finds places he has never seen.

IGN Brasil's summary of the feature adds a few more details:

• Many shops, towers and homes can be entered without loading screens.
• NPCs use more than 600,000 contextual animations.
• The whole map is open from the start, with no story or police lockouts on regions.

We covered more of the interview in our rundown of the Edge feature.

About that 35-minute drive

The 35-minute figure comes from IGN Brasil's headline, which compares it with about 10 minutes to cross GTA 5 by car. The article's own text gives a different GTA 5 time: five to six minutes in a sports car on the highway. The outlet doesn't say where the 35-minute estimate comes from, and it admits the number still needs to be fully confirmed.

One more reason to be careful: doubling a map's area doesn't double the distance across it. If Leonida is about twice GTA 5's area, a drive several times longer is hard to explain from Rockstar's comparisons alone. Winding roads, traffic or slower routes could close some of that gap. Until someone times a real drive, treat 35 minutes as a guess.

What's next

The GamesRadar+ report points to Reddit threads where fans are amazed that a world this size runs on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, consoles that are now about six years old. The outlet notes that Netflix showed an extended look at the game running in August.

Players can find out for themselves soon. GTA 6 launches on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Until then, the 12 new screenshots from Edge 430 show more of Leonida's scenery.