Vice City alone is shaping up to be enormous.
The main GTA VI metropolis is roughly twice the size of GTA V’s Los Santos, while the wider state of Leonida dramatically expands the playable world with smaller cities, wetlands, islands, industrial areas, beaches, and wilderness.
GTA VI is not simply taking Los Santos and stretching it across a larger map.
Rockstar is building a much denser version of Vice City surrounded by multiple developed regions, giving players considerably more urban space to explore outside the main metropolis.
Vice City Alone Is Around Twice the Size of Los Santos
The clearest comparison is also the most impressive: GTA VI’s Vice City is approximately twice the size of Los Santos from GTA V.
And that is only the central city.
Los Santos dominated the southern part of GTA V’s map, with Blaine County providing large stretches of desert, mountains, highways, and smaller settlements to the north. GTA VI takes a different approach. Leonida has multiple substantial developed areas beyond Vice City rather than surrounding its main city almost entirely with countryside.
That should make the scale easier to feel during normal gameplay. A bigger map does not mean much if most of it is empty terrain. GTA VI appears to be putting far more emphasis on populated locations, businesses, neighborhoods, activities, and smaller towns spread across the state.
The Areas Outside Vice City Are the Bigger Surprise
The scale becomes even more interesting once you leave the city.
The amount of built-up space outside Vice City is said to be roughly 11 times larger than the comparable developed areas beyond Los Santos in GTA V.
That makes sense when looking at the regions already revealed across Leonida. GTA VI is not just Vice City plus some countryside. The wider map includes:
- Leonida Keys – a tropical island chain connected by long roads and waterways,
- Grassrivers – wetlands filled with wildlife, boats, and marshland,
- Port Gellhorn – a rundown coastal city with its own urban identity,
- Ambrosia – an industrial and rural region built around heavy industry,
- Mount Kalaga National Park – wilderness, rivers, canyons, and mountainous terrain,
- Vice City – the dense metropolitan heart of the game.
Rockstar Wants Exploration to Matter Without Covering the Map in Icons
The extra space is also being used differently.
GTA VI includes discoveries that are not necessarily announced through objectives, mission markers, or map icons. Simply leaving the main roads and exploring can lead to encounters, locations, and activities that players might otherwise never see.
That approach could make Leonida feel closer to Red Dead Redemption 2 than GTA V. Instead of treating every interesting location as another marker to clear, Rockstar wants players to notice something unusual and investigate it themselves.
The important part: GTA VI is not chasing map size for its own sake. Vice City is bigger than Los Santos, but the more significant change may be how much developed and explorable space exists beyond the main city.
This Could Make GTA VI Feel Much Larger Than GTA V
GTA V already had a huge map, but much of the northern half was wilderness. Once players learned the major roads, most everyday activity naturally pulled them back toward Los Santos.
GTA VI looks much less centralized.
Port Gellhorn, the Leonida Keys, Ambrosia, Grassrivers, and Mount Kalaga all give Jason and Lucia reasons to stay away from Vice City for extended periods. That could make traveling across the state feel more like moving between distinct destinations instead of leaving the city for a temporary trip into the countryside.
Add side activities such as scuba diving, racing, kayaking, fishing, dirt bikes, airboats, and exploration, and the size of Leonida starts to matter for more than just driving time.
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Los Santos Suddenly Looks a Lot Smaller
The headline number is easy to remember: Vice City alone is around twice the size of Los Santos.
But the real scale of GTA VI comes from everything surrounding it. Multiple developed regions, smaller cities, tropical islands, wetlands, industrial areas, and wilderness mean Leonida should feel like a state rather than one city surrounded by empty land.
And if Rockstar succeeds in filling that space with things players can discover without following another map icon, the biggest difference between GTA V and GTA VI may not be how far you can drive. It may be how often you want to stop along the way.