GTA 6’s Game Informer cover story: hurricanes, 170 species, and who said what

Game Informer’s Grand Theft Auto VI cover story confirmed three things that had only been rumoured: tropical storms and hurricanes, more than 170 animal species, and — in the words of one of Rockstar’s most senior developers — the largest map the studio has made. The fourteen-page feature in issue 382 went live digitally on 29 September, built on interviews with several Rockstar lead designers.

Most of it sits behind a subscription, so what you have read about it came to you in one of three forms: Game Informer’s own free web pieces, quotes from named Rockstar staff that other outlets lifted from the magazine, and summaries with no quote attached. They are not equally strong, and the headlines rarely say which is which. This piece does.

What did Game Informer reveal about GTA 6?

The magazine announced the issue on 25 September as a 14-page cover story with “exclusive interview quotes” and 12 new screenshots, written by senior associate editor Marcus Stewart, a lifelong South Florida native. The subject was Leonida itself: how far Rockstar went to recreate Florida “both ecologically and culturally”, its weather and its wildlife.

Does GTA 6 have hurricanes?

Yes — Game Informer says so in its own headline and its own words. “Florida is known for experiencing tropical storms and seasonal hurricanes; the same is true in Grand Theft Auto VI’s Leonida,” its free exclusive reads, adding that Rockstar confirms “dynamic cloudscapes that roll across Leonida” and localized storms: you can stand somewhere dry and sunny and watch rain hammer a spot in the distance, then drive there afterwards and find puddles. Under the right light, rainbows appear after a shower.

That caveat is the most important sentence in the coverage, and it comes from the person who did the interviews. A hurricane in GTA 6 is confirmed to exist. Whether it floods streets, closes roads, changes missions or is weather you watch from a window is not something Rockstar told him. The free piece names no Rockstar employee; the attributed detail comes from the paywalled story, where Owen Shepherd, Rockstar’s vice president of art for lighting and rendering, said the team had “re-engineered our weather system to make everything much more localized and persistent”, and that “hair and debris will swirl around on roof-tops; gusts of wind will blow ripples over the water surface.”

How many animals are in GTA 6?

More than 170 species “across land, air, and sea”, several of which have never appeared in a Rockstar game. Game Informer’s free exclusive names natives — flamingos, manatees, pelicans and alligators — and, more surprisingly, invasive species: green iguanas, cane toads, feral cats and rhesus macaque monkeys. Animals get new hair and fur systems and effects such as iridescence, bioluminescence and translucency, building on the Red Dead Redemption work.

The same page says some animals fall into Rare, Discoverable and Legendary tracking categories, and that the identities of the hardest to find are being kept secret. Dexerto, quoting the magazine, puts the split at more than 60 bird types and over 30 land mammals, and quotes Michael Kane, Rockstar’s vice president of dynamic art: “Florida has a diverse animal ecosystem that we wanted to faithfully include across the different biomes in Leonida.”

That podcast, published on 2 October, is the editors discussing their own reporting — how Leonida compares to Florida, how the weather may compare to Red Dead Redemption 2 — and it is careful in the same way the written piece is. Where they did not get an answer, they speculate and say so.

How big is the GTA 6 map, according to Game Informer?

Big, by a ratio rather than a number. Aaron Garbut called it the largest map Rockstar has made “by some degree”, and Dexerto reports the size as about double GTA V’s Los Santos and Blaine County — its summary, not a quote. Garbut’s own words were about density: the team “obsessed about every part” of a world meant to be a “cohesive whole”.

Rupert Humphries, Rockstar’s senior vice president of narrative, added the line that matters to anyone planning a playthrough: “Part of the job of the game’s story is to bring the player around the map in a way that feels authentic and interesting.” Dexerto reads it, with his remark that “we don’t have time to take you everywhere”, as confirmation that the story will not visit every corner — so exploring is left to the player. No area in square miles or kilometres was given, and every figure since is somebody’s arithmetic on “twice”.

Who at Rockstar spoke to Game Informer?

Four Rockstar names appear in the quotes that have travelled out of the magazine, and their titles say a good deal about what the feature was for. None is a producer or a marketer; all four are the people who build the world. That matches the cover reveal’s framing — interviews with “several lead designers at Rockstar Games” about one place, Leonida, rather than about the story or the business.

There is a practical reason this matters. A quote with a name and a title attached is something Rockstar can be held to after launch; a magazine summary is not. If you are deciding what to believe about weather or wildlife before 19 November, the four rows above, and Game Informer’s two free pages, are the firmest ground available outside the game itself.

What activities did the cover story list?

Insider Gaming summarised the list as base jumping, billiards, gyms, kayaking, mini golf, scuba diving, street and off-road racing, zoos, airboating and jet skiing — and added, rightly, that “emphasis needs to be on the word ‘some’”. It quotes nobody, so this is the weakest grade in the table above: a list from a story most readers cannot open. GTA Intel noted that gyms and racing had already been hinted at in the Extended Look, while zoos and mini golf are new. Our activities page keeps the established ones apart from the rest.

Can you read the Game Informer GTA 6 issue for free?

Partly. The two exclusives on storms and animals are free on the website. The issue page says the full print edition can be read online through a flipbook, but “Subscribe to read the full print issue online”. Print copies were due to reach subscribers and newsstands “in the coming weeks” after 29 September; a print subscription is ten issues a year and ships to more than 50 countries, according to the cover reveal.

GTA Intel reported that the cover story was later made free to read in the Game Informer app, while noting that neither Rockstar nor Game Informer had publicly confirmed the change. We could not confirm it either, so the honest answer is: the headline details are free, the full story may be, and the magazine itself still sells it.

Five weeks before launch, that is the shape of this game’s pre-release coverage in miniature. A trusted outlet got real access, published the headline facts for free and kept the depth for paying readers — and the internet turned three grades of information into one. Hurricanes are confirmed. How they play is not. The difference is one sentence, and Game Informer printed it. On 19 November, the first thing worth checking is the question the magazine could not answer: whether a storm rolling in over Leonida changes anything you actually do.