GTA 6 Edge cover story: map size, NPCs, police dogs

Edge magazine's GTA 6 cover story went on sale on October 29. It is a 16-page feature in issue 430, built on a visit to Rockstar's Edinburgh studio, and it includes interviews with Rockstar North co-studio heads Aaron Garbut and Rob Nelson along with an account of an unscripted demo. GamesRadar+, Edge's sister site, published the full feature for free. The print edition has a gatefold cover with art of Jason and Lucia.

The issue was announced on October 27. GTA 6 launches on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, so this is one of the last big previews before release. It follows the extended look that aired on Netflix at the end of August.

A map nearly the size of three Rockstar games

Edge says Leonida, counting Vice City and its surroundings, is almost as big as the maps of GTA 4, GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 put together. HobbyConsolas notes that this works out to roughly twice the size of GTA 5's map.

Rockstar talks more about density than area, though. Garbut told Edge the game has "an order of magnitude more interiors" than the studio's earlier titles and that "every back alley is as densely detailed and interesting as the others," per PC Gamer. During that morning's play session, he said, he walked into a house he had never visited. One room had framed photos of the family dog, and the next room had the mess the dog made while home alone, poop included. Dog mess is apparently a theme this year, after the South Park clip of Jason throwing dog poop.

The feature says the cool reception to GTA 5's sparse northern areas, like the Senora Desert, shaped how Leonida's outer regions were built. Garbut admits there are still places on the map he hasn't explored.

Asked about following up GTA 5, Garbut said the team has "not compromised on the scale, the detail, the interactivity, the story, the open world." Then came the line everyone quoted: "I feel like we've built a pyramid on Everest." Edge also calls Red Dead Redemption 2 a deep influence on the game.

NPCs with temperaments

According to Edge, Rockstar put together a Los Angeles-based team of writers, directors and producers just for Leonida's NPCs and art-directed around 600,000 animations. Each pedestrian has traits such as temperament and aggression. Their reactions also depend on where they are, what they've seen and how the player has treated them, and each district has its own demographic and professional mix. "How many people are going to go for a weapon? How many are going to test me?" Nelson said.

The demo shows how this works in practice. Nelson, playing Jason, stares at a man walking his dog. The man takes it as a challenge and lets the dog off the leash, and the dog chases Jason until it gets bored. Jason then lights a cigarette from his inventory, sneaks up to a police car left unattended during an arrest, pops the boot and takes a shotgun.

Police dogs

In Critical Hits' write-up, the demo also showed police K9 units. A night-time motorcycle escape ended on spike strips that were hard to see, and a police dog caught up with a limping Jason. The outlet says shooting the dog counts against the Criminal Profile. Its other ideas are guesses that Rockstar hasn't confirmed: that dogs show up at a certain wanted level, that they might follow a scent, and that swapping outfits from a car's trunk could help you lose them.

The weapon wheel fight

A separate report came out before the magazine. On October 27, Critical Hits, citing reporter Jason Schreier, said Rockstar nearly dropped the weapon wheel after deciding that Jason and Lucia would visibly carry only a pistol and one or two long guns. Teams reportedly tested other options from 2019 to mid-2022. The repeated revisions wore down veteran staff and allegedly contributed to some departures. According to the report, the final design keeps the eight-slot wheel and stores extra guns, ammo and explosives in your personal vehicle's trunk. That fits Nelson's shotgun grab. The same report says work on Leonida started in 2015 with five or six people and later grew to 65 artists. Rockstar hasn't commented.

Still unknown

Rockstar hasn't announced a PC release date. PC Gamer mentions a rumour that the wait will be short, but it points out that Rockstar usually leaves about seven months between console and PC versions, and GTA 5 took a year and a half. GamesBeat has separately reported a Q1 2027 window. Everything else will be clear on November 19.