Everyone wants to know: how much bigger is it? The short answer is a lot. The longer answer involves not just raw square mileage but the density and verticality that Rockstar's packed into Leonida compared to what we had in GTA V's San Andreas. This isn't just a bigger map -- it's a fundamentally more detailed one.
Raw Size Comparison
GTA V's San Andreas -- including Los Santos, Blaine County, and the surrounding ocean -- clocked in at roughly 75 square miles of playable area. Leonida in GTA 6 is estimated at 2.5 to 3 times that in usable land area alone. The Vice City map guide breaks down the seven distinct zones: Ocean Drive, Starfish Island, Little Haiti, Vice Beach, the Grassrivers wetlands, Port Gellhorn, and rural farmlands. Each one has more density and activity than entire regions of GTA V's map.
Enterable Buildings
This is where the generational gap really shows. GTA V had a handful of enterable interiors -- a few shops, story mission locations, and some businesses. GTA 6 blows that wide open. Shops, restaurants, apartments, parking garages, nightclubs, office buildings, and dozens of mission-specific interiors are all explorable. The internal SSD requirements on PS5 and Xbox Series X exist precisely because the engine streams this much interior geometry on the fly.
Population and Traffic Density
GTA V could put maybe 30-40 NPCs on screen in busy areas. Leonida's Vice City pushes well past 100 during peak times, each running on improved AI routines. Traffic density follows suit -- rush hour in downtown Vice City feels genuinely chaotic in a way that Los Santos never quite achieved. The RAGE engine overhaul makes this possible while maintaining stable frame rates.
Weather and Environmental Systems
San Andreas had rain, fog, and the occasional thunderstorm. Leonida takes the Florida inspiration seriously -- tropical storms roll in with escalating intensity, hurricane-force winds affect vehicle handling, and the Grassrivers wetlands flood dynamically. Time-of-day transitions are far more gradual and natural-looking, with golden hour lighting that photographers would appreciate.
Verticality
GTA V's Los Santos had skyscrapers you could look at but rarely interact with. Vice City in GTA 6 uses elevation more meaningfully -- rooftop access, multi-level parking structures with playable space, underwater caves along the coast, and the flat-to-elevated terrain changes between the wetlands and the urban core. It's a map designed for three-dimensional exploration, not just surface-level driving.
The Bottom Line
GTA V was massive for its time. Leonida makes it look like a proof of concept. The combination of scale, density, enterable spaces, and environmental systems puts this in a different category entirely. Check the graphics guide for how each console handles rendering all of this, and the system requirements for what you'll need to run it.