Rockstar went to some great lengths for its Grand Theft Auto 6 research, it seems, as the studio has said it sent multiple teams of developers to Miami as well as embedding a team there longer-term for research.

This all comes via a story in Dazed magazine, published online late last night ahead of the full mag going out to the public in September, where various Rockstar developers discussed the level of research that went into building the game (amongst other things).

The first aspect of that is GTA 6’s NPCs, described in the piece as acting “less like NPCs than ever”. Rockstar’s goal is apparently “to create a world of total immersion”, with characters reacting more directly to you as you walk down the street. The notorious “Florida Man” meme is also brought up – the habit of Florida-based men finding themselves in the papers after ludicrous escapades – which has always felt like a natural fit for GTA’s weird, over-the-top pedestrians. But it sounds like while there’ll still be plenty of weirdness, Rockstar’s also taking a slightly more thoughtful approach this time.

GTA 6 (Grand Theft Auto 6) – Official Trailer 2

“We look back at our previous games with a critical eye and see where we want to evolve based on what we didn’t do as well as we would have liked to, either because we didn’t have the time, resources or technological capabilities, or in some cases things we just didn’t do as well or consider as fully as we could have,” Rockstar North studio co-head Rob Nelson told the magazine.

And as for those NPCs, per Dazed: “Young and old, tall or short, tattooed, pierced or modified with plastic surgery, wearing throwback Hawaiian shirts, sharp suits, luxury fashion or muddy combat gear, the bodies and clothes of the virtual masses are also far more varied than in previous games, and more tailored to their local environments, from Vice City’s Little Cuba to the wilderness of Mount Kalaga national park.”

Writer Michael Wiafe, meanwhile, told the magazine the studio is aiming to build a Miami and Florida-based world with “an open mind, a genuine appreciation and a deep curiosity” towards the real cultures involved. “It’s easy to go in with a cynical view and say, ‘Well that’s weird, put it in the game,’” he said, “but we couldn’t just stop there. We have to bring a sense of discovery to the players too, not just repeat cliches that already exist.”

That brings us to the research. Per the article, multiple groups of Rockstar employees have visited Miami and its surrounding areas over the past decade. There’s also a “dedicated research team embedded in the city”, which the studio set up for the game. Rupert Humphries, senior vice president of narrative at Rockstar, added that the studio has met with “ex-criminals, law enforcement, club promoters, gun dealers and anyone notorious or influential who’ll take our calls”. The developers will then “hang out, get a feeling for the place, listen to the stories, cross-reference that with books and journalism, and try to get to the heart of which characters will bring the city we are creating to life.”

Humphries also cites various elements of the Miami music scene, “particularly Miami bass”, as well as artists such as Kodak Black and Sexyy Red. “We were also really interested in how the hip-hop scene in Miami exists in house parties in Overtown, clubs like Booby Trap on the River, and then high-end places on South Beach where bottles can cost thousands of dollars. We needed characters who could take us through those worlds,” Humphries told the magazine.

The studio has also worked with Miami-based stylist, Jillian Carr, since 2023, according to Dazed. The aim has been to design an in-game “fashion ecosystem” to reflect the “taste, lifestyle, affluence and individuality” of Miami and the US as a whole. “Vice City is built around vanity,” Carr said to the magazine, somewhat tellingly.

It’s also noted that the studio now has an entire branch in LA dedicated to NPC dialogue, that Rockstar’s development team has more than doubled in size since the release of Red Dead Redemption 2, and that “more than 50 real street artists were brought in to design murals in places like Vice City’s Stockyard (based on Wynwood, Miami). The team that deals with vehicle handling is made up of literal race-car drivers.”

Meanwhile, it was also revealed that GTA 6 will have a San Andreas-style weight gain and loss sytem, and more gameplay details such as how switching between Jason and Lucia works were clarified, too. It all adds up to, as you might expect, a game that sounds like it will feature an extraordinary sense of realism, depth, and breadth – and that has been made at extraordinarily lavish expense.

In the lengthy build-up to its eventual 19th November launch, there’s been plenty going on of course. The studio was at the heart of a controversy over its decision not to sell GTA 6 on physical discs (and to restrict some gameplay elements to the £90 Ultimate Edition), as well as a significant one over an ongoing legal battle over alleged union-busting with scores of developers it fired late last year.

It’s also been hit with more than a dozen clips of leaked gameplay over the past week. The latest there is that Rockstar has launched subpoenas seeking huge amounts of user information from Microsoft and Discord in an attempt to track down the leaker – although Discord is yet to receive its subpoena at the time of writing.

All that, and we’ll get a proper look at the game for the first time publicly this evening, via Netflix and then later, YouTube.