Leonida in GTA 6: how its six showcased locations differ

In GTA 6, Leonida is a fictional American state inspired by present-day Florida. Vice City lies within it, but the game extends beyond the city. Rockstar has separately introduced six places of different scales: Vice City itself, the Leonida Keys islands, the Grassrivers swamps, coastal Port Gellhorn, industrial Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga National Park. These are selected locations, rather than a complete map or a list of the state’s administrative regions.

The Leonida Keys recall the Florida Keys, while Grassrivers evokes the Everglades. These are recognisable parallels, but Rockstar has not published a precise table matching game locations to real Florida places. In an interview with Famitsu, Rockstar’s Rob Nelson explained that the team chose modern Florida and Miami for Leonida because of the variety of their people and neighbourhoods. Rockstar’s page brings together a neon metropolis, boat docks, swamps, a former resort, factories and northern forests within one state. Here is what the official material tells us about each place.

Vice City and the Leonida Keys: city life beside the islands

Rockstar’s GTA 6 presents a modern Vice City. Ocean Beach has pastel-coloured hotels and white sand, Little Cuba has bakeries, the Tisha-Wocka market sells counterfeit goods, and the port welcomes cruise ships. For players familiar with GTA: Vice City, this brings back a known name in a different era, but Rockstar has not yet explained the relationship between the two games’ stories. Here, Vice City matters as part of Leonida; its neighbourhoods and city life are covered separately.

The Leonida Keys have a different character. Rockstar describes a tropical archipelago with an easygoing life, bars and beautiful but dangerous waters. Official images show a bridge linking the islands, a seaplane, divers and lively parties on boats. The images convey island life, but do not yet confirm that players can dive or fly the seaplane.

The Keys also have a story connection. After leaving the army, Jason Duval works here for local drug runners. Brian Heder, an experienced smuggler, lets him live rent-free in one of his houses while Jason helps with local shakedowns. The islands become the starting point of Jason’s story before his joint ventures with Lucia Caminos, GTA 6’s other protagonist. The official synopsis promises events across the state, but Rockstar has not yet revealed the pair’s route.

Grassrivers and Port Gellhorn: water without the resort glamour

Grassrivers shows Leonida’s swamp country: mangroves, alligators and stilt houses. Screenshots include airboats, flat-bottomed boats propelled by a large fan, and a chase through flooded terrain. One image shows people beside a dead alligator; another shows an armed person on an airboat. These shots show people and animals in the swamps, but do not establish how hunting works in the game.

Rockstar portrays Port Gellhorn as a coastal place once popular with tourists. It now has cheap motels, shuttered amusement parks and empty shopping centres. The images include a motel at night, a cabaret and people beside a bonfire. Its contrast with Vice City lies in the place’s decline: the old resort identity remains, but the prosperity has gone. Rockstar has not named one exact real-life model for Port Gellhorn or specified its administrative status.

Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga: factories, bikers and forests

Ambrosia sits in Leonida’s industrial heartland. Rockstar highlights the Allied Crystal sugar refinery, which employs local people, and a biker gang influencing another side of the town’s life. Images show factory smokestacks, bikers and a burning field. The refinery supplies jobs and the bikers shape the town, but Rockstar has not yet discussed missions in Ambrosia.

Rockstar describes Mount Kalaga as a national park on Leonida’s northern border, with forests and hills, hunting, fishing and off-road trips. That is a description of the place, rather than an announcement of separate hunting and fishing systems. Screenshots show people with rifles, motorcycles, a kayak and a cougar near deer. Which details become player activities, and how they work, will have to be checked in the game itself.

What is official and what remains out of view

Rockstar invited people to explore several notable Leonida locations and gave each its own description. Six presentations do not mean the state has exactly six administrative districts or no other towns. Vice City itself includes several named neighbourhoods; Ambrosia contains a refinery; Mount Kalaga is a park. Long lists of individual locations and the six major showcased places therefore answer different questions.

The Rockstar pages examined for this article establish the character of these places, but not their exact roads, boundaries or distances from one another. Those pages contain no complete official map. Fan maps assemble clues from trailers and screenshots, but their roads and area remain reconstructions. It has also not been revealed at what point in the story each region becomes accessible. New material and the game itself should help answer these questions.

Vice City, the islands, swamps and northern forest already feel like different worlds within one Leonida. Rockstar promises a story spanning the state, but has not yet revealed exactly where Jason and Lucia will go.

Sources

• Rockstar Games, Only in Leonida: official descriptions of the six locations, characters and images.
• Rockstar Games, GTA VI: overall story synopsis set in Leonida.
• Rockstar Games, screenshot gallery: official images organised by region.
• Famitsu, interview with Rob Nelson: why the team chose present-day Florida and Miami.