Rockstar had finally pulled out the curtains of the upcoming GTA 6 yesterday via the extended look on Netflix where we got to see actual gameplay along with lots of glimpses of the enormous and spectacularly detailed world of Leonidas. Easily the most vibrant and photorealistic open world to ever come out of videogames, the full map of Vice city in GTA 6 is twice the size of the enormous Lost Santos from GTA 5, as confirmed by one of the studio heads in Rockstar North in a recent interview with Davy Jones (via Flow Games):
“Vice City [from GTA 6] alone is twice the size of Los Santos from GTA 5. The built-up areas outside the city are actually 11 times the size [of the previous one],” Rob Nelson, co-studio head of Rockstar North has revealed. “This is because the rest of the map will not only consist of rural areas, but also several smaller cities.”
The dev also stated to IGN that GTA 6 actively encourages exploration and players will also be rewarded for it in many ways:
“There’s a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we’re not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well. If you take a bit of time and explore, you will be rewarded – a lot. It’s a big map, a very big map.”
The gigantic open world of GTA 6 will likely take years, maybe even decades to fully explore, given Rockstar’s sky-high ambitions and the handcrafted nature of their open worlds. In terms of the sheer size and density of it’s fully realized open world, it’s quite obvious that GTA 6 is going to be the benchmark for all other titles to follow, for years if not decades.
Basically, the only aspect of the game that can’t match the sheer scale of it’s world is the limited framerate in both consoles which seems to be locked at 30 FPS, but judging by the incredibly lifelike visuals, that’s a fair trade-off.
GTA 6 is currently slated to launch for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19, 2026.
