Game Informer’s cover story: hurricanes, 170 animal species and a map twice GTA V’s

Game Informer’s cover story on Grand Theft Auto VI went live on September 29, built on access Rockstar gave the magazine. Most of it is behind a paywall; these are the details reported in the parts that are public and in VGC’s coverage of it.

Weather, including hurricanes

Rockstar has reworked its weather to be local and lasting: storms you can see coming from a distance, wet streets that stay wet after the rain, rainbows in the right light. Like Florida, Leonida gets tropical storms and seasonal hurricanes. Game Informer is clear about what it does not know — how often the big storms come, or what they do to the game and the story.

More than 170 animal species

Across land, air and sea, both native and invasive: flamingos, manatees, pelicans and alligators alongside green iguanas, cane toads, feral cats and rhesus macaques. The harder-to-find animals are grouped as Rare, Discoverable and Legendary, and Rockstar is keeping the identities of the rarest ones back.

The map, and things to do in it

Per VGC’s report of the interview, Rockstar North’s Aaron Garbut calls Leonida the biggest map Rockstar has made “by some degree”, about twice the size of GTA V’s. VGC also lists activities from the story, among them base jumping, billiards, gyms, kayaking, mini golf, scuba diving, street and off-road racing, zoos, airboats and jet skis.