GTA 6 interiors: an order of magnitude more, says Rockstar

Rockstar North co-studio lead Aaron Garbut says Grand Theft Auto 6 contains "an order of magnitude more interiors" than the studio's earlier games. He said it in an interview with Edge magazine, which GamesRadar+ reported on November 1. Rockstar also gave Edge a new way to picture the size of Leonida: the map is nearly as big as GTA 4, GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 put together.

"Order of magnitude" normally means something like ten times as many, but Garbut didn't attach a figure to it. Rockstar hasn't said how many buildings players can actually walk into.

Handmade back alleys instead of filler

Garbut is selling density more than size. "Every back alley is as densely detailed and interesting as the others," he told Edge. Pick any spot on the map, he said, and "so many people have thought about that location." GamesRadar+ contrasts this with procedural generation, the tool many studios use to fill huge open worlds automatically. In its reading, Rockstar is having people build those spaces by hand.

Garbut also said he keeps finding things he hadn't seen before, even after years of playing the game during development. That matches another point Rockstar made in the same round of interviews, that the game has grown too big for any one developer to know in full.

Strangers' homes that look lived in

The most specific detail concerns ordinary houses. According to Edge, the homes of random residents aren't empty boxes. Family photos hang on the walls, and the kitchens and living rooms are cluttered the way real homes are, so walking in feels like trespassing.

Garbut backed that up with a story. He walked into one house and saw photos of the family dog. In the next room he found the dog itself, which had clearly been left alone too long. "The whole place was trashed," he said. "There was shit in the corner, smeared around a bit." He also hinted that the owner would face consequences for leaving the pet behind, but didn't explain how the game handles that.

GamesRadar+ places the pitch in a long line of developers promising that what you see on screen is real and reachable. Todd Howard's famous line about walking to the top of a Skyrim mountain is one example. Randy Pitchford's claims about Borderlands 4 are another. The difference is that Rockstar is making the claim about the inside of buildings, not about distant scenery.

Open questions about the interiors

The interview leaves several things unanswered. Rockstar hasn't said how many of these interiors are open to free exploration and how many only open during missions. It also hasn't said whether every residential door can be opened, or how breaking into a stranger's home ties into police response. The Edge feature has already produced other details, including Rockstar's comments on how the main story is paced. For everything else officially known about the game, see our GTA 6 overview.