GTA 6's Game Informer cover story: twice GTA V's map, hurricanes, and 170 species
Game Informer's GTA 6 cover story: a map about twice GTA V's, hurricanes, 170+ animal species and a new Heat system. What's confirmed and what's reported.
Carried by established outlets, not officially confirmed.
Game Informer's Grand Theft Auto VI cover story went live on 29 September: issue 382, a 14-page feature by senior associate editor Marcus Stewart, built on interviews with Rockstar's senior developers, with 12 new screenshots and original cover art from Rockstar. It's the most detail Rockstar has given about how Leonida works since the Extended Look in August.
Some of it is on Game Informer's free pages, and some sits behind its subscription. We've split the two. What Game Informer published openly carries a Confirmed stamp. What comes from the paywalled feature, as reported consistently by several outlets, carries a Reported stamp. That's why this post is stamped Reported overall.
The map
That matches what Rockstar North's Rob Nelson told press in August: about twice GTA V, and three times Red Dead Redemption 2. Garbut's emphasis on interiors is the new part, and it's the answer to the question we've been asking since our map explainer: not how big it is, but how much of it you can walk into.
Weather
What nobody knows yet is how often hurricanes happen, or whether they affect missions and the story. Game Informer says so itself.
Wildlife
Outlets reporting from the full feature say that includes more than 60 kinds of bird and more than 30 land mammals.
Police, and what you'll do between crimes
Game Informer's free pages also note that NPCs have more varied body types and more distinct features than in past Rockstar games.
What this changes
Two things. The map question now has a consistent answer from two senior Rockstar figures: about twice GTA V, and much denser. And the systems Rockstar chose to talk about, weather, wildlife, and police, are about the world rather than the plot. That's how the whole campaign has run: show the place, say little about the story.
For everything Rockstar has shown so far, see our timeline of official GTA 6 reveals. The game is still dated for 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.