Rockstar has revealed that the GTA 6 map is twice the size of GTA 5's map and three times the size of Red Dead Redemption 2's map, according to details shared by YouTuber TGG after a visit to Rockstar North. The story is also significantly longer, with a recent playthrough taking around 80 hours to complete.
TGG, who was invited to Rockstar North earlier this month, posted a video sharing 'exclusive' details from his conversation with Rockstar's head of development Rob Nelson. In the video, TGG said: 'The map is twice the size of GTA 5's map, three times the size of Red Dead 2's map. Vice City itself is twice the size of Los Santos, and Vice City and its surrounding suburbs is 11 times bigger than Los Santos and its surrounds, which is, like, nuts, dude.'
Map Details and Setting
GTA 6 is set in the Florida-inspired location of Leonidas, which includes Vice City and other areas such as the Leonida Keys and Port Gellhorn. Rockstar has not officially released a graphic of the map, but a version appeared to emerge in recent leaks, which seems to show more city areas compared to GTA 5's map.
The GTA 6: An Extended Look video on Netflix was packed with details but did not indicate the game's size. Rockstar titles are known for their massive open worlds, and while they are technically not as large as something like No Man's Sky or Microsoft Flight Simulator, they are far more dense in graphical detail and interactive elements.
Story Length and Characters
In an interview with the New York Times, Nelson revealed that his most recent playthrough in February this year took around 80 hours to complete, encompassing the main story and 'optional goals with narrative ramifications'. This suggests there will be side missions affecting the main story. For comparison, GTA 5's main story takes 32 hours to beat, and 51.5 hours with side content, according to HowLongToBeat. This means GTA 6's story is comparable to Red Dead Redemption 2, which takes roughly 84.5 hours to beat with side content, or around 50 hours for the main story alone.
In a separate interview with IGN, Nelson discussed reducing the number of playable characters from three in GTA 5 to two in GTA 6, to increase the 'amount of player time with each'. 'As the narrative unfolds, we're quite conscious to try and make sure that players have enough time with each character,' Nelson said. 'After doing GTA 5, we talked about different ideas of – do we do more characters? How do we follow up three characters? Is it four characters now? But we worried about diluting the amount of player time with each and therefore player connection with those characters. So we decided to step in this direction of two characters in a relationship.'
Based on the Extended Look, the dynamic between Jason and Lucia seems to be one of the strongest aspects so far. The full game launches on November 19, 2026.
