A seaplane heads towards a lightning storm. Another image stretches Vice City across water and towers. These new GTA 6 screenshots are not a trailer, but they accompany the most substantial look at Leonida in months. Game Informer has published 12 exclusive images and a 14-page cover story based on interviews with Rockstar's lead designers. Its subject is the world, its weather and its wildlife, not a new release date or a PC announcement.
The pictures come with specific claims. Rockstar discusses hurricanes and tropical storms, rain falling in one area while another remains sunny, and more than 170 animal species. Other reported details, from the map's scale to interiors and Jason and Lucia's relationship, suggest where the game is heading. They do not settle everything that has yet to be shown in motion.
A larger Leonida needs places worth entering
According to GTA Base's account of the Game Informer feature, Rockstar art director Aaron Garbut puts Leonida at roughly twice the area of GTA 5's map. That is an attributed estimate, not an independently measured square-mile figure. Rockstar also aims for more accessible interiors than in any previous entry, with particular attention paid to rooftops, alleys and the spaces between major buildings.
The setting spans six main regions: Vice City, Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga. A new panoramic shot shows a dense Vice City beside the water, with a lit stadium at dusk. It communicates visual scale, but cannot tell us how many buildings we can enter. For the clues already on record, see our guide to the community-built Leonida map and our breakdown of the Extended Look.
Hurricanes are coming, but their gameplay impact is unclear
Game Informer's weather exclusive describes moving clouds, localized rainfall and puddles and wet surfaces that linger after the rain. Rainbows, tropical storms and hurricanes are also part of the plan. The storm screenshot illustrating this article, with a seaplane approaching lightning, makes Rockstar's intention to bring South Florida's less pleasant weather into Leonida plain.
We do not yet know how often hurricanes occur, whether they interrupt missions or what they do to traffic and pedestrians. Their presence does not, by itself, confirm destructible cities or a storm that rewrites the plot. That distinction will matter when we can play: a storm might be a striking backdrop or an event that makes us change plans.
More than 170 species on land, at sea and in the air
Game Informer's separate wildlife report puts the count at more than 170 species. Examples include flamingos, manatees, pelicans and alligators, alongside invasive iguanas, cane toads, feral cats and rhesus macaques. Rockstar has worked on feathers, fur, translucency, iridescence and bioluminescence. There are also rare, discoverable or legendary animals to track down.
The wetlands screenshot works because it is not a checklist: birds, deer and an alligator share one scene. It suggests wildlife encounters during exploration, though we do not yet know how much animals affect everyday play, whether there is anything comparable to Red Dead Redemption 2's systems, or what tracking them will earn us. The count is impressive. Finding these creatures naturally will matter more than seeing them in a menu.
Jason, Lucia and a city that wants to feel occupied
The beach shot, crowded with swimmers, umbrellas and activity, shows a variety of people and situations in one busy space. It conveys the care Rockstar is putting into Vice City. It cannot establish that every passerby has an intricate routine or that this density will be identical on every console.
The same account of the feature says Jason and Lucia's relationship can develop as a friendship or a romance through interactions and choices, without either path offering a direct gameplay advantage. It also describes robberies with different approaches and a police response that remembers a suspect's appearance and the location of a crime. Those details matter because they could connect the world to player decisions. We still need to see a full mission to judge how much freedom they actually offer.
What these images show, and what they cannot yet prove
The exclusive changes a familiar GTA 6 question. It is not enough to ask whether Leonida is larger than Los Santos. We want to know whether weather, wildlife, policing and relationships make the same street play differently from one visit to the next. The 12 images and interviews establish ambition and several concrete figures. They do not establish performance, the depth of every system or the exact size of the playable map.
For now, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S are scheduled for November 19, 2026. There is no official PC date. Until Rockstar shows extended, uninterrupted play or we can test the game ourselves, the soundest reading is that Leonida has been designed to hold our attention even between missions. The open question is how much of that apparent life we will be able to interact with.
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