GTA 6 Map Size Analysis: Vice City vs Port Gellhorn in the Extended Look

The recent 26-minute Extended Look for Grand Theft Auto 6 didn't just show us combat and police chases; it gave us our first true sense of scale for the state of Leonida. While the leaks and trailer snippets gave us an idea of the geography, the uninterrupted gameplay footage finally allows us to understand the sheer density of this world.

For players obsessed with exploration, the burning question has always been: Just how big is the map, and more importantly, how dense is it?

Based on the footage, the answer is both staggering and slightly intimidating. Let's break down what the Extended Look revealed about the contrasting hubs of Vice City and Port Gellhorn, and the massive wilderness connecting them.

When Jason and Lucia drove through the neon-drenched streets of Vice City, the most striking element wasn't the footprint of the city, but its density. Los Santos in GTA 5 was sprawling, but much of it felt like a static movie set. Vice City, however, feels profoundly three-dimensional.

The Extended Look showcased a significant increase in verticality. We saw multi-level highway overpasses seamlessly weaving through skyscrapers, with pedestrians navigating elevated walkways.

More importantly, the number of enterable buildings appears to have drastically increased. During a 3-minute sequence, the duo transitioned from a bustling street seamlessly into a functioning laundromat, out the back door into a cramped alleyway, and into an underground nightclub—all without a single loading screen or camera cut.

"The density of Vice City implies a map that might not just be wider than GTA 5, but significantly deeper. You could likely spend hours exploring a single city block."

While Vice City represents the glitz and glamour, the Extended Look dedicated a significant portion of its runtime to Port Gellhorn. Situated to the west, this area serves as the grittier, more rural counterpart to the main metropolis.

The transition between the two areas is what truly flexes the RAGE 9 engine's capabilities. We watched a seamless drive from the dense urban core, across a massive bridge spanning the archipelago, and into the murky, humid swamps of Leonida.

Port Gellhorn feels distinct. The architecture shifts from towering glass to dilapidated strip malls and industrial yards. The NPC behavior also changes drastically; the chaotic influencer culture of Vice Beach is replaced by rougher, more survivalist elements in the swamps.

The space between the cities is no longer just filler. The swamps and wilderness areas of Leonida are teeming with a dynamic ecosystem inherited directly from Red Dead Redemption 2, but scaled up for modern hardware.

We saw alligators dynamically interacting with NPCs, and complex weather systems—including a brief glimpse of a severe tropical squall—affecting driving physics on the muddy rural roads. This wilderness acts as a natural barrier and a completely different gameplay arena, requiring different vehicles and survival tactics compared to the urban centers.

While the community map projects attempt to calculate the exact square mileage of Leonida, the Extended Look proves that raw size isn't the primary metric we should be focusing on. The density, the lack of loading screens, and the interactive depth of every location are what will make this map feel genuinely revolutionary.

Whether you plan to dominate the penthouses of Vice City or survive the mud bogs of Port Gellhorn, Leonida is shaping up to be the most detailed open world ever created.