One of the most consequential design shifts anticipated in Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI) concerns the dramatic expansion of explorable interior spaces. Where Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V, 2013) limited the player to a small number of mission-gated or property-bound interiors, Rockstar's intervening title Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2, 2018) demonstrated an entirely new philosophy — populating its world with dense, persistent, fully simulated buildings that could be entered, looted, and inhabited (Rockstar Games, 2018). The September 2022 leak of GTA VI development footage, the most significant such breach in industry history, confirmed that this RDR2-derived approach to interior density is being carried forward into Vice City (MacDonald, 2022; Wikipedia contributors, 2026). Leaked clips depicting an apartment, a diner robbery sequence, and a strip club interior collectively suggest that the boundary between "exterior open world" and "interior set-piece" is being deliberately dissolved.
RDR2 reset expectations for what an open-world interior could be. Saloons, gunsmiths, general stores, hotels, sheriff's offices, gang hideouts, isolated cabins, and even derelict shacks in the wilderness were modelled as continuous, seamless extensions of the exterior world — no loading screens, persistent NPC routines inside, working stock on shelves, lit fireplaces, and reactive ambient dialogue (Rockstar Games, 2018). Analysts have repeatedly noted that RDR2 contained hundreds of accessible buildings relative to the roughly two dozen "deep" interiors in GTA V, the bulk of which in GTA V were either safehouses, the Los Santos Customs garage template, or strip club / clothing-store instances reused across the map (Tassi, 2018). RDR2's interior-to-exterior ratio, combined with its dynamic interior NPC behaviour (shopkeepers reacting to weapons drawn, patrons fleeing, sleeping inhabitants waking), set the technical and design template that GTA VI is widely expected to inherit, given both titles share the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) and overlapping development teams (Wikipedia contributors, 2026).
On 18 September 2022, the user "teapotuberhacker" published roughly 90 videos containing approximately 50 minutes of work-in-progress GTA VI footage on GTAForums, with the authenticity confirmed by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier and Rockstar itself days later (MacDonald, 2022; Wikipedia contributors, 2026). Among the most analysed clips were three distinct interior sequences:
Crucially, The Guardian and other outlets stressed that the footage was up to a year old at the time of leak and represented unfinished work, meaning the final product is expected to exceed what was shown rather than fall short of it (MacDonald, 2022).
GTA V (2013) was, for its console generation, lauded for the scale of Los Santos and Blaine County, but its interior offering was comparatively shallow. The vast majority of buildings in Los Santos were façades; enterable interiors were limited to a handful of purchasable properties (safehouses, businesses introduced via DLC and Online updates), franchise interiors reused across the map (Ammu-Nation, Ponsonbys, 24/7 stores), and a small set of bespoke mission interiors that became inaccessible after their respective missions concluded (Tassi, 2018). The Vanilla Unicorn, the Vinewood Bowl, and a few hotels were exceptions rather than the rule. GTA VI's leaked material indicates a deliberate inversion of that ratio: interiors as the default expectation rather than the exception, mirroring how RDR2's saloons and stores functioned as ambient social infrastructure rather than scripted vignettes (Robertson, 2022; Wikipedia contributors, 2026).
Several factors make this expansion feasible for GTA VI where it would have been prohibitive on the PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 hardware GTA V originally targeted. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S NVMe storage architectures effectively eliminate the loading-screen budget that previously gated interior transitions; the updated RAGE engine inherits RDR2's volumetric lighting, cloth simulation, and NPC scheduling systems; and Rockstar's reported budget — analyst estimates of US$1–2 billion would make GTA VI the most expensive game ever developed — provides the asset-production capacity required to populate Vice City's interiors at the density RDR2 achieved in the American frontier (Wikipedia contributors, 2026). The 6 May 2025 second trailer and accompanying 70 screenshots released on the official Rockstar Games site further reinforced this direction, showcasing detailed bar, residential, and commercial interiors (Rockstar Games, 2025).
If the leaked design intent reaches the released product on 19 November 2026, the consequences for emergent gameplay are substantial. Robbery as a core, repeatable activity — not merely a scripted heist — becomes viable across every commercial interior in Vice City. Stealth, social-stealth, and surveillance gameplay gain dramatically more legible spaces to occur in. Player-housing systems become richer if apartments are persistent and modifiable. And the long-running criticism that GTA V's world was "wide but shallow" stands to be directly rebutted by an interior-density model imported from RDR2 (Tassi, 2018; Wikipedia contributors, 2026).
The expansion of interior spaces in GTA VI is not a peripheral feature; it is arguably the single clearest carry-over of RDR2's design DNA into the Grand Theft Auto lineage. The 2022 leak, despite its illicit origin and unfinished state, provided concrete evidence that apartments, diners, and adult-entertainment venues will be modelled as fully-realised, persistently-accessible spaces rather than the façades and mission-gated instances that characterised GTA V. Combined with current-generation hardware and the largest development budget in industry history, GTA VI's Vice City stands poised to deliver the densest, deepest interior simulation Rockstar has ever shipped.
MacDonald, K. (2022) 'Rockstar owner issues takedowns after Grand Theft Auto VI leak', The Guardian, 19 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/sep/19/rockstar-owner-issues-takedowns-after-grand-theft-auto-vi-leak (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Robertson, S. (2022) 'GTA 6 leak reveals return to Vice City', Dot Esports, 18 September. Available at: https://dotesports.com/general/news/gta-6-leaks-reveal-return-to-vice-city (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Rockstar Games (2018) Red Dead Redemption 2. New York: Rockstar Games.
Rockstar Games (2025) Grand Theft Auto VI – Official Site. Available at: https://www.rockstargames.com/VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Tassi, P. (2018) 'Red Dead Redemption 2 makes GTA 5 look small by comparison', Forbes, 27 October.
Wikipedia contributors (2026) 'Grand Theft Auto VI', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).