GTA 6 verdict: Vice City is shaping up as the richest open world ever — and the hardest to ignore
A verdict built on density, not size
After rewatching the 26-minute Extended Look that premiered on Netflix on August 27, French outlet WorldOfGeek came away with a clear impression: Vice City is not trying to break surface-area records. The ambition, it argues, is denser — making every street, beach or gas station a small stage capable of pulling the player away from the mission for an hour. Rockstar, in this reading, is no longer building a map but "a machine designed to provoke distractions."
One mission says it all
The verdict rests on the extended gameplay sequence starring Jason and Lucia, who meet a contact nicknamed Boobie to pick up a package — a handover that goes wrong when the police arrive. Nothing revolutionary on paper, notes WorldOfGeek: criminals, a shady deal, flashing lights, the series' standard breakfast. What stands out is everything around the action: sets that feel inhabited down to their corners, lighting that gives each place an immediate identity, and pedestrians who no longer look like cloned extras. All of it captured from in-game footage on PlayStation 5, with no attempt to hide the seams.
The duo also reads differently than in GTA V, the outlet observes. Jason and Lucia already function as a pair rather than two interchangeable avatars, and their proximity gives ordinary scenes a more personal tension — a choice that could turn travel and preparation into narrative moments, provided their relationship is not locked into overly scripted missions.
Activities that integrate more than they impress
The presentation strings together activities at near-comic speed: store robberies, nocturnal street races, basketball, bodybuilding, motocross, diving, jet-ski, canoeing, parachuting, circuit racing and long trips outside the city center. Taken separately, none of these break new ground. Together, they sketch a Leonida where you can go from a police chase to a day at sea without feeling the program change — the same principle as Red Dead Redemption 2, where side activities serve less to tick boxes than to give the illusion of a territory that keeps living without you.
That, argues WorldOfGeek, is where GTA VI could build a lead that is hard to catch. Many studios can make a beautiful city or a big catalog of mini-games; few have the time, the staff and the budget to connect those elements with credible animations, consistent physics and natural transitions. The show of force is not a photorealistic palm tree — it is that nobody seems to be waiting politely for the player to arrive.
The warning attached to the praise
The outlet remains cautious about the race for detail, recalling that Red Dead Redemption 2's immersion could slow down the simplest gestures. The Extended Look shows a familiar shooting system, a selection wheel and a slow-motion aim assist — clean and readable, but not yet stunning. The danger, WorldOfGeek warns, would be to deliver the most sophisticated backdrop in history for missions that remain just as rigid. Visual richness will never replace gameplay freedom: if Rockstar allows chaos in the streets but punishes every detour during missions, the contradiction will be hard to forgive.
A helmet resembling an old VR headset also appears in the footage. For the outlet, nothing suggests a VR mode — it is more plausibly an accessory in Vice City's tech satire. Clue hunters can put their headset down for now.
GTA VI launches November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S; no PC version has been announced. The presentation, WorldOfGeek concludes, reassures on density, staging and identity — but the biggest exploit will be giving consequence to all that profusion, letting systems meet and letting players break the mechanics. If Leonida keeps that promise, other open worlds may suddenly look like very large parking lots.