GTA 6's LOVE interview: how Rockstar built Leonida, its people and its story

LOVE’s 27th issue has been released, featuring an extensive GTA 6 interview with seven Rockstar developers. It gives us our first opportunity to discuss more than the cover, which was shown earlier. Senior developers and writers explained how trips through Florida shaped Leonida, why Jason and Lucia pull each other in different directions, what Raul brings to the story and how the team writes the city’s residents. The interviewer was Kacion Mayers. Here we examine the new details and how they fit into the wider picture of the game.

The issue accompanies the interview with new character images created by Rockstar for LOVE. Jason and Lucia appear in different outfits and settings, including a diner and a pool hall. This is a styled magazine shoot: the changes in hair and clothing do not, by themselves, confirm specific in-game appearance settings.

Florida first, then the map and story

Rob Nelson, one of Rockstar North’s senior developers, described the order in which the team builds a GTA game. First, it chooses a setting and studies it closely enough to understand which neighbourhoods, people and activities are interesting. It then decides which characters will let the player see different sides of that world. After that, the writers outline the story and place its key events on the map.

This sequence matters for GTA 6. Leonida, the fictional state inspired by Florida, is more than scenery for an adventure written in advance. Its places and residents help determine what Jason and Lucia’s story will become. Nelson also described working in cycles of roughly eight weeks: the team assembles another portion of the game, assesses it and adjusts priorities for the next cycle. Years of work on the project emerge from these repeated rounds.

Realism, however, is not an end in itself for Rockstar. Nelson says it should help people believe in the world and its characters. If reproducing life literally makes the game tiring, the team abandons that approach. Leonida’s detail is therefore better judged by whether it helps players feel the place and act within it, rather than by counting objects on the map.

From Miami to the swamps: what the team saw first-hand

Another Rockstar North senior developer, Aaron Garbut, described the early Florida research trips. A small group set out from Miami, travelling through neighbouring cities and along the Florida Keys to Key West. Larger teams later returned to the same places with cameras, recording equipment and specific tasks.

Garbut and the artists filmed the Everglades’ mangroves, downtown Miami and the coastline from a helicopter. The developers spoke to locals, rode with police officers and gang members, and listened to stories about a side of the region tourists do not see. What Garbut remembered most were the contrasts: enormous wealth alongside poverty, friendliness alongside danger, and the desire to make money and display it to everyone nearby.

GTA 6 will take players to Vice City, the Leonida Keys, the Grassrivers swamps, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga. Artist Michael Kane says the state’s different communities are conveyed through more than buildings. Clothing, hairstyles, makeup and how people present themselves help give these residents a recognisable identity. The interview does not establish an exact map size or a list of activities in each region, but it does explain the method: real observations become the character of a fictional state.

Jason, Lucia and a new American dream

Rupert Humphries, Rockstar’s senior vice president of narrative, discusses how the American dream has changed in GTA. Instead of a fantasy of extraordinary success, the goal might be much more modest: a home for a family and a debt-free life. Even that seems out of reach for many people today. South Florida’s mix of wealth and ambition gives the characters a particularly charged environment.

For Jason Duval, this is more than background. Humphries says Jason’s financial circumstances help explain why the former soldier transports drugs and becomes involved in bank robberies. The writers also leave room for players to judge him: is Jason truly forced into crime, or does he choose it because of who he is? The interview does not declare him a victim of circumstance or absolve him of responsibility.

The protagonists’ relationship is described more precisely, too. LOVE’s question compares Lucia to the pair’s accelerator and Jason to its brake. Humphries confirms that the writers developed them as people who complement, push and restrain each other. Lucia wants a better life and will not let obstacles stop her. This contrast grew from scenes written for the pair, rather than from a simple template of two opposites.

Writer Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern adds that Lucia’s performer had a major influence on the character. The team wanted both protagonists to be strong yet vulnerable, capable of making mistakes and learning from each other. Another writer, Alexa D’Agostino, drew on her mother, who grew up in Newark, while working on Lucia. This part of the interview also supplied a new detail: Lucia’s hometown in GTA’s world is Liberty City.

Why the pair needs Raul

Humphries separately explained Raul Bautista’s role. Jason and Lucia are young; their flight and string of crimes combine excitement with inexperience. But a GTA story must also lead its protagonists to major heists. The writers therefore created an older mentor who knows Vice City’s criminal world and brings the pair into bigger operations.

Raul connects the personal story of two newcomers to the larger crime narrative. This explains his narrative function; it does not promise a particular mission, sequence of robberies or fate for the character.

Satire that can outlast today’s headlines

GTA 6’s development spans years, so a joke about a brief trend could become dated before release. Humphries says the writers draw on more enduring phenomena, such as conspiracy theories and society’s strange responses to ordinary events, then invent their own exaggerated versions.

Politics will still be visible in Leonida. Players might see an election sign, receive a campaign call, or hear an advertisement or argument on the radio. Rockstar is not trying to copy a particular contemporary politician or event directly. Humphries says its aim is to take a recognisable contradiction and amplify it into satire. This explains why social conflicts can be present in the world even without a dedicated political story mission.

Why a passerby’s conversation is part of the game

Questions about radio, advertising and incidental dialogue reveal the scale of the writing work in Leonida. Humphries discussed writers producing advertising and comedy material in New York, Los Angeles and London. James Horton, who heads the open-world writing team, described a new Los Angeles team focused specifically on pedestrian dialogue, with a production team working alongside it.

The aim he describes is simple: players can run past other people’s conversations and catch only fragments, but the dialogue should also stand up to attention if they stop to listen. For the writer, nobody exists purely as background. This describes the approach to writing the world; it does not confirm that every pedestrian will have a personal storyline or remember the player’s actions.

What the interview gives us

LOVE’s biggest contribution is not one new mechanic. The developers explained how GTA 6’s geography, characters and tone fit together. Florida research trips helped identify places and people; Leonida’s contrasts shaped the story of a couple dreaming of a calmer life; Raul connects them to a larger crime narrative; and advertisements, radio and pedestrians make the same world believable outside the main missions. We cannot test how well those ambitions work together before release, but Rockstar’s intended game is now much clearer.

Sources

• LOVE Issue 27, Kacion Mayers’ interview with Rockstar developers, published 5 October 2026. Magazine announcement; transcript posted by a reader. The transcript is not an official digital publication and may contain transcription errors.
• Cross-checking of details, attribution and images: iGrandTheftAuto, Vice Central, Grand Theft Auto Wiki.
• LOVE images were saved from the GTAVice gallery. Grassrivers and Raul screenshots came from official Rockstar Games material.