LOVE Magazine: New GTA 6 Details on Jason, Lucia, Raul, NPCs, Satire and the Making of Leonida

In a new LOVE Magazine interview, Rockstar Games has revealed new GTA 6 details, including Jason and Lucia's personalities and criminal backgrounds, the scale of NPC dialogue, and the extensive Florida research behind Leonida.

The comments come from a wide-ranging interview published by LOVE Magazine, featuring several senior Rockstar developers and writers including Rockstar North co-studio heads Rob Nelson and Aaron Garbut, Senior Vice President of Narrative Rupert Humphries, Vice President of Art Michael Kane, Writing Director James Horton and game writers Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern and Alexa D'Agostino.

The developers discussed the company's extensive research across Florida, how Jason and Lucia were written, the role Raul Bautista plays in their story, GTA 6's approach to politics and satire, and how Rockstar is attempting to create a world where even seemingly insignificant background characters can withstand the player's attention.

LOVE describes GTA 6 as a "GTA love story", placing players in the roles of Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval, described as "two lovers on the run" across the state of Leonida. The magazine also describes it as Rockstar's "deepest and most immersive experience to date", promising a completely new approach to what the studio has previously created.

GTA 6 has been built "one obsessive day at a time"

Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson offered an unusually detailed explanation of how Rockstar actually develops its enormous open worlds.

Once Rockstar settles on a location for a Grand Theft Auto game, the team begins researching the real city or state that will inspire it. After spending enough time there to understand the location, developers begin identifying the areas they want to recreate, the types of people they want players to encounter and even what type of protagonist would allow them to experience the widest possible range of that world.

A rough narrative is then created, with major story beats physically plotted against the map.

Development subsequently progresses through a series of eight-week milestones, during which agreed sections of the game are brought together and evaluated. Feedback from each milestone determines the priorities for the next.

"We work our way there, year after year, one obsessive day at a time, course-correcting as we go."

Nelson describes Rockstar's development process as "highly iterative", adding that despite the enormous growth of the development team, maintaining a consistent tone and a singular creative vision remains critically important.

He also explained that realism isn't automatically the goal. Rockstar instead tries to find the point where realism increases immersion without becoming tedious for the player.

Rockstar travelled across Florida with police and gang members

Rockstar's research for GTA 6 began with small groups travelling through Florida before increasingly large teams returned for more detailed research.

Aaron Garbut revealed that one of the earliest trips involved a small group travelling from Miami through surrounding towns, through the Florida Keys and down to Key West.

Garbut described those early trips as one of his favourite parts of development: driving for days with friends while discussing what they wanted to make and immersing themselves in the locations.

He says those initial trips aren't necessarily about conducting exhaustive research. The smaller groups initially experience the locations and work out which places and ideas stand out before Rockstar returns "in greater numbers" to go considerably deeper.

Later trips became much more detailed. Garbut says he would constantly record what was around him using cameras and phones, while Rockstar employees spent time with local people to understand different sides of Florida.

The research wasn't limited to conventional sightseeing either.

"We travel around with cops and with gang members. Everyone is lovely. Some people are equally scary."

Rockstar deliberately investigated Florida's "underside", hearing stories and visiting locations which Garbut says could be terrifying.

The team also conducted extensive aerial research. Garbut and several art directors spent an entire day filming from a helicopter, flying low and fast above the Everglades' mangrove inlets before heading over downtown Miami and its beaches.

During one flight they accidentally hovered over a stadium hosting a Beyoncé concert, apparently attracting enough attention that Garbut believes they appeared on the local news the following day.

Leonida is built around Florida's extremes

Those research trips heavily influenced Rockstar's vision for Leonida.

Garbut describes Miami as a city of extraordinary contrasts: wonderful people alongside incredible wealth, extreme poverty, excess, craziness, hustle and a desire to show everything off.

Rockstar deliberately sought out these extremes because it wanted them represented throughout GTA 6's world.

Vice President of Art Michael Kane similarly describes Florida as an extraordinarily rich visual reference. Rather than simply exaggerating its inhabitants into caricatures, Rockstar has undertaken detailed research into individual locations and communities.

The interview specifically names several of GTA 6's major regions: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grass Rivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga.

Kane describes the "crazy nuance" Rockstar has engineered into clothing, styling, cosmetics and hairstyles, saying these smaller details are hugely important for making characters feel "truly authentic, interesting, and diverse" while representing the different tones of Leonida.

GTA 6 won't simply parody whatever happens to be trending

Senior Vice President of Narrative Rupert Humphries explained that GTA's famously satirical writing begins with something surprisingly straightforward: Rockstar follows whatever makes its writers laugh.

The studio looks for unexpected angles that still feel authentic within GTA's gritty but deliberately exaggerated world. Humphries says everyone from billionaires to people down on their luck needs to feel as though they exist within the same tonal landscape and share the human weaknesses that make effective targets for satire.

One major complication is GTA 6's exceptionally long development cycle. A joke about a trend which is popular for six months could be completely irrelevant by the time the game releases years later.

Rockstar therefore avoids simply chasing whatever is currently popular.

"We took things that interested us, like the conspiracy theories, the strange ways the public reacts to everyday occurrences. Those are the things we ran with."

Instead of directly recreating real events or conspiracy theories, Rockstar creates exaggerated versions of them that can exist independently within its fictional universe.

Humphries says GTA 6's contemporary world needs to be more extreme than reality itself, otherwise Rockstar would simply be recreating what players can see outside their windows.

"If you are going to put all this effort into creating a version of today's world, it has to be more over the top, more insane, more in your face."

Humphries also addressed the traditionally British influence behind GTA's satire. While Rockstar still has "a lot of Brits" on the team, he says American developers share a similar sensibility about the jokes they make and the subjects they target.

Despite all of the satire, Rockstar also needs players to genuinely connect with and enjoy spending time in its fictional version of Florida.

"You need to get inside the place, to fall in love with it, so you can tell the world why they want to come here."

Humphries says that's what Rockstar did with Miami and Florida while developing GTA 6.

Politics will exist throughout Leonida – but Rockstar isn't targeting specific politicians

The interview also addresses politics in GTA 6 directly.

LOVE asks about Ambrosia, Rockstar's industrial town inspired by Clewiston and Lake Okeechobee, including a "Vote Erin Henshaw" sign apparently connected with Allied Crystal.

Humphries says national politics historically hasn't been a major focus of GTA. GTA IV's Homeland Security and Patriot Act themes were exceptions because they were so closely connected to the post-9/11 New York City that inspired Liberty City.

For GTA 6, Rockstar similarly wants its satire to feel specific to its time without becoming a direct recreation of particular real-world politicians, events or movements.

However, Florida gives Rockstar plenty to work with.

"Making a game in Florida though, there is so much to work with, and we have really tried to build out our world—filling it with all the characters and culture wars necessary to make it feel alive."

Political storytelling won't necessarily require missions or conversations with important characters either.

Players might see election signs, receive campaign robocalls, hear political advertisements or listen to political talk shows on the radio discussing Leonida's various controversies.

Humphries compares the philosophy to Red Dead Redemption 2, but says GTA takes the underlying reality and makes it more satirical, grotesque and larger than life.

Rather than simply reproducing an issue, Humphries says Rockstar tries to get to its heart and then "explode the part of it we find interesting" until the ridiculousness of the position becomes clear and, hopefully, funny.

Rockstar discusses the modern "American Dream"

LOVE also asked Rockstar how the concept of the American Dream has changed since earlier GTA games.

Humphries suggested that today's version might be considerably more modest than the traditional fantasy of becoming extraordinarily wealthy.

"Maybe the American Dream is more modest now. It's a house for your family and your loans paid off instead of wild success—but maybe today, that's just as out of reach for the average person."

Miami and Southern Florida are particularly useful settings for exploring this theme because Rockstar sees the region as a meeting point between astronomical wealth and enormous ambition.

Humphries describes the resulting environment as a "pressure cooker for all kinds of insanity."

Jason's circumstances help explain why he becomes a criminal

LOVE specifically questioned whether Jason's history, including his time in the Army, was deliberately written as a story about failed social mobility.

Humphries says Rockstar wasn't trying to make a specific political statement through Jason's background.

However, he confirms that Jason's material circumstances are important to understanding why he eventually resorts to serious crime.

"It needs to be understood that he takes the measures he does—drug trafficking and becoming a bank robber, etc.—because of his material circumstances."

Crucially, Rockstar doesn't want to provide the player with a definitive moral explanation.

Humphries says it remains open to interpretation whether Jason truly needs to resort to those crimes or whether he makes those decisions because he's simply "wired differently from other people."

The answer nevertheless gives us one of the clearest descriptions yet of Jason's criminal activities, explicitly connecting him with drug trafficking and bank robbery.

Lucia is the engine while Jason is the brake

Rockstar also provided additional insight into the relationship between its two protagonists.

LOVE characterises Lucia as the "engine" of the partnership and Jason as the "brake", something Humphries broadly agrees with.

The developers wanted Jason and Lucia to complement one another and "push and pull" each other through the story. Humphries says that dynamic emerged naturally while the writers developed scenes involving the pair.

Lucia, in particular, needed to be someone determined to build a better life.

"Lucia had to be someone who wanted a better life for herself, and wouldn't let the obstacles in the way of that life stop her getting it."

Game writer Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern also reveals that the actress playing Lucia significantly influenced the character.

Rockstar knew it wanted a GTA protagonist who could be "tough, badass, cool", but it simultaneously wanted both Jason and Lucia to be vulnerable and flawed.

They can be right and wrong, and importantly, they're capable of learning from one another.

Lucia grew up in Liberty City

Perhaps one of the most interesting pieces of new character information comes from game writer Alexa D'Agostino.

While writing Lucia, D'Agostino drew inspiration from women she personally knew, particularly her own mother, an immigrant who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, close to Lucia's hometown.

That hometown is revealed to be Liberty City.

"My mother was an immigrant who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, close to Lucia's hometown of Liberty City."

D'Agostino says her mother raised her to be "rowdy, kind, but not to take any shit", adding that she related a lot to Lucia and that writing the character came "very naturally" to her.

Rather than approaching Lucia as fundamentally different because she is a woman, Rockstar concentrated on creating a complete and imperfect person with her own ambitions and weaknesses.

D'Agostino says the goal was to create a woman capable of standing alongside two of Rockstar's most celebrated protagonists: Arthur Morgan and Niko Bellic.

Raul is Jason and Lucia's experienced mentor

The interview also reveals significantly more about Raul Bautista and his role within GTA 6's story.

Humphries says Rockstar considered an important aspect of the Bonnie-and-Clyde premise to be the relative youth and inexperience of Jason and Lucia.

"There's something hopeful and naive about going on the run and pushing a crime spree to its limit without worrying about the consequences."

That presented Rockstar with a problem: GTA players expect increasingly elaborate robberies, heists and large-scale action sequences, but it wouldn't necessarily make sense for Jason and Lucia to already possess the knowledge needed to organise them.

Raul fills that gap.

Rockstar created him as an older mentor figure capable of introducing Jason and Lucia to the large-scale heists and set pieces expected from a GTA crime story.

He's also intended to embody Vice City itself, bringing what Humphries calls a "knowing Miami-cool" into the game.

According to Humphries, Raul possesses the local and criminal knowledge that Jason and Lucia lack when they get to Vice City.

GTA 6 has a dedicated team writing pedestrian conversations

Some of the most revealing comments concern GTA 6's open world rather than its main storyline.

Rockstar has assembled dedicated groups responsible for the enormous quantity of incidental dialogue players will encounter throughout Leonida.

Humphries says there is a specific team of pedestrian dialogue writers in Los Angeles, alongside advertising and comedy writers spread across New York, Los Angeles and London.

The dialogue players might consider "background noise" isn't treated as background material internally.

"And none of us see it as background! It's all part of the tapestry of the game and creates the experience of living in this wild world."

Writing Director James Horton says Rockstar "dreamed a lot bigger this time around."

The company didn't simply assign more writers to incidental dialogue. Horton says Rockstar established an entirely new writing team in Los Angeles whose sole focus is pedestrian dialogue and placed them alongside a dedicated production team with the same mandate.

The objective is to create dialogue convincing enough to work at two completely different levels.

A player sprinting down one of the busiest streets in the city might hear "snatches of a hundred different conversations" as they go. But if that same player suddenly stops and decides to listen closely to one particular conversation, Rockstar wants it to remain completely convincing under that scrutiny.

"There is no background in this game"

Horton provides perhaps the strongest description in the entire interview of what Rockstar is trying to accomplish with GTA 6's open world.

"In a way, there is no 'background' in this game; there's just foreground that you're not paying attention to right now."

Rather than Rockstar deciding what is important and what is scenery, the player's attention determines what becomes the foreground.

If the player suddenly focuses on something previously considered insignificant, Horton says it should be able to "fill the frame" and "push back."

That philosophy extends directly to GTA 6's NPC population.

"No one you meet is an extra; they're not only full characters, everyone you meet is the main character in their own story."

Horton acknowledges that creating this kind of world presents enormous technical challenges, describing the work as "profoundly technical writing". The goal, however, is for that writing to make players forget they're interacting with a system at all, instead keeping their attention focused on their relationship with the world and the people inhabiting it.

No individual writer could create something on this scale, he says. Instead, Rockstar needs hundreds of different approaches and voices working together.

"You need an ensemble team to make an ensemble world."

Rockstar wants players to "get lost" in GTA 6

Ultimately, Rockstar says its decisions around realism, writing, characters and world design all serve the same objective: immersion.

Nelson argues that video games are uniquely capable of allowing an audience to inhabit an imaginary world rather than simply observe one.

Realism is useful only when it contributes to that experience, and Rockstar is willing to abandon realism whenever it would make GTA 6 less enjoyable.

After almost 13 years since the release of Grand Theft Auto V, GTA 6 represents Rockstar's attempt to build its deepest and most convincing world yet.

"We hope people will want to escape into these worlds and these characters—to get lost with them and in them."