Rockstar Finally Talked: GTA VI Has Hurricanes, 170-Plus Animal Species — and No Disney World

Rockstar almost never talks. So when the studio sat down with Game Informer for a 14-page cover story — the cover of issue 382, revealed September 25 and published digitally on September 29 — it was always going to be the single biggest on-the-record look at Grand Theft Auto VI before launch. Demand was heavy enough that Game Informer’s website and app crashed the moment the story went live, per IGN’s reporting. Three weeks from release, a lot of fans still haven’t actually read what’s in it. This is the briefing.

The story, written by Game Informer senior associate editor Marcus Stewart — a South Florida native who grew up in the world Rockstar is fictionalizing — is built on interviews with five of the studio’s most senior people, including Aaron Garbut, co-studio head of Rockstar North and art director on every GTA since 2001, in what the piece notes is his first interview. He was joined by narrative senior vice president Rupert Humphries, environment art senior vice president Paul MacPherson, lighting and rendering lead Owen Shepherd, and dynamic art lead Michael Kane. Twelve new screenshots, none previously published, run alongside it, under original Rockstar cover art of Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos in a convertible on the Vice City waterfront.

Yes, hurricanes are in

The longest-running weather question about Leonida is settled: tropical storms and hurricanes can hit the state. Shepherd describes the full effect — heavy clouds, strong winds, water gushing off roof edges and lampposts, thunder and lightning lighting the clouds. The everyday system underneath it is just as ambitious: weather is localized and persistent, so you can stand in dry sunshine and watch a storm pouring down in the distance; a new wind system models offshore breezes after sunset, convection updrafts, and buildings blocking the wind; hair and debris swirl on rooftops, gusts ripple the water and bend swamp grass, puddles linger after the rain passes, and under the right light you can catch a rainbow after a shower. One of the twelve new screenshots shows it directly — a seaplane over the Leonida Keys with a storm front and two lightning strikes on the horizon. What Rockstar did not say: how often the big storms come, or whether they touch missions or the story.

170-plus species, and some of them are Legendary

Leonida is stocked with more than 170 animal species — over 60 kinds of birds, more than 30 land mammals, plus fish and reptiles. Manatees, flamingos, pelicans, and alligators are confirmed by name. Florida’s invasive problem made the cut too: green iguanas, cane toads, feral cats, and rhesus macaque monkeys share the state with the natives, and several species have never appeared in a Rockstar game before. Certain animals can be tracked, sorted into Rare, Discoverable, and Legendary categories whose identities Rockstar is keeping secret — a system that will sound familiar to anyone who hunted in Red Dead Redemption 2, which was sold on “over 200 species.” A city crime game is now operating near that number. The screenshots sell it: a Grassrivers wetland at sunrise with an alligator in the water, a roseate spoonbill taking off, a white-tailed buck, wood storks, and flocks overhead in a single frame.

The map question, answered by Rockstar itself

Garbut put the scale on the record: the map is around twice the size of GTA V’s, and the biggest Rockstar has ever built. His emphasis, though, was density over acreage. “We obsessed about every part — the rooftops, the alleys, the internals and everything in between to the point we hit a critical mass with the numbers of our interiors,” he told the magazine, “and you start to feel the buildings are more real inside and out.” The citizens filling that space get a wider range of body types and distinct physical features, and the confirmed activities list runs long: base jumping, billiards, gyms, kayaking, mini golf, scuba diving, street and off-road racing, zoos, airboating, and jet skiing — plus dates for Jason and Lucia, hikes included.

The one thing Leonida won’t have

For years, one of the loudest GTA VI rumors promised a Disney World parody — fans even had a name for it: “Fairyland.” Game Informer asked MacPherson directly whether central Florida’s tourist landmarks — Orlando, Walt Disney World, Universal Studios, the Space Coast — would appear in any form. His answer retires the rumor: “We have to constantly evaluate the diversity of landscapes, towns, structures, landmarks, vistas, plant species, rock formations and everything else before we work with design and narrative to distill a list down that best works with and serves the game’s needs. So, while we may not have those exact locations, everything we have is geared to getting that full Florida experience.” IGN carried the exchange on September 30 under the headline “You Probably Shouldn’t Expect a Disney World Parody in GTA 6.” No Fairyland. The full Florida experience, minus the theme parks.

Why a magazine, and why it worked

There’s history in the format: GTA V got the same treatment, an 18-page Game Informer cover story in December 2012. For Game Informer itself — shut down by GameStop in August 2024, revived in 2025 under new ownership — landing the decade’s biggest game is the loudest possible proof the revival is real. The cover story is free to read in the Game Informer app, and the print issue has been shipping to subscribers and newsstands through October; the magazine is openly pitching it as a collectible, and new subscribers get it as their first issue. Grand Theft Auto VI launches November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Between now and then, this remains the most concrete thing Rockstar has ever said about the state it’s about to hand over.

Previously’s Take

Rockstar's silence is the loudest marketing in games — which is why a magazine interview matters. When the studio finally talks, it doesn't deal in hype; it deals in systems: weather that behaves like weather, wildlife sorted like a hunting journal, a map sold on density instead of acreage. And the most useful answer in the whole issue is a no — no Fairyland, no theme-park parody — because it closes a rumor the internet had been treating as a feature list. Three weeks out, this is the real shape of Leonida: bigger, wetter, wilder, and built out of specifics.

— The Previously Desk