Underwater exploration has been a niche but memorable component of the Grand Theft Auto series since Grand Theft Auto V (2013) introduced full scuba diving mechanics, submersibles, and an explorable seabed beneath the coast of Los Santos. With Grand Theft Auto VI relocating the series to the fictional state of Leonida — a parody of Florida that incorporates Vice City (Miami), the Leonida Keys (the Florida Keys), Grassrivers (the Everglades) and surrounding coastline — underwater traversal is widely expected to return as a significantly expanded feature (Rockstar Games, 2025; Wikipedia, 2026a). The combination of a tropical, reef-laden marine setting, the prominence of drug-runner protagonist Jason Duval (whose backstory places him "in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners"), and the two trailers' repeated maritime imagery all suggest that subsurface gameplay will be more central than in any prior entry (Rockstar Games, 2025).
Grand Theft Auto V established the baseline. Players could "engage in context-specific activities such as scuba diving and BASE jumping" while free-roaming the open world (Wikipedia, 2026b). A dedicated submersible (the Submersible) and scuba gear were unlocked through the Merryweather Heist's "Bottom Dogs" setup mission and the "Daddy's Little Girl" strand activity, giving access to a fully modelled ocean floor populated with shipwrecks, hidden nuclear waste barrels, sharks, dolphins, hammerheads, whales, and a downed Titan aircraft. The Pacific Ocean floor effectively functioned as a parallel exploration biome, and players could swim to a depth limited only by their air gauge. This system, built atop Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) overhauls for draw distance and water rendering, was technologically ambitious for 2013-era hardware (Wikipedia, 2026b) and provides the direct template Rockstar will iterate on for GTA VI.
The single most important geographic signal for underwater content is the explicit inclusion of the Leonida Keys, modelled on the real Florida Keys (Wikipedia, 2026a). The Florida Keys sit alongside the Florida Reef — the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States and the third-largest in the world — encompassing biotopes such as elkhorn, staghorn and brain coral, seagrass meadows, mangrove fringes and frequent shipwrecks (NOAA, n.d., cited in tourism and dive literature). Rockstar's track record of using field research trips and photographic reference for environmental fidelity (Wikipedia, 2026b) makes it highly probable that the Keys' shallow, sunlit reef ecosystems, wreck-dive sites and mangrove channels are reproduced in-engine. The official site's "Explore Leonida Keys" section accompanying the Jason Duval and Brian Heder bios features azure shallows, boatyards and runner infrastructure that strongly imply traversable waters around the islands (Rockstar Games, 2025).
Trailer 2, released on 6 May 2025, foregrounded water more aggressively than the first trailer. It opens with Jason "just fixing some leaks" — a line widely read as a self-aware reference to the 2022 GTA VI data breach but also a literal nautical framing (Wikipedia, 2026a). The trailer's screenshots batch (70 official stills released alongside the trailer) and accompanying website update show jet skis, speedboats, airboats in the Grassrivers/Everglades analogue, beach scenes, and at least one clearly underwater composition featuring sunlit caustics and a swimmer/diver silhouette (Rockstar Games, 2025; Wikipedia, 2026a). Brian Heder's bio confirms a "boat yard" operation in the Keys used for smuggling, and Cal Hampton is described as "snooping on Coast Guard comms" — both narrative hooks that imply gameplay loops involving offshore drops, dives to recover dropped contraband, and evading maritime law enforcement (Rockstar Games, 2025).
Drawing on confirmed lore and GTA V's precedent, plausible underwater content in GTA VI includes:
While Rockstar Games has not formally detailed Grand Theft Auto VI's underwater systems, the convergence of evidence — the explicit Leonida Keys setting, Jason's drug-running backstory, Brian Heder's boatyard, Trailer 2's water-forward composition, and the precedent set by GTA V's scuba and submersible content — makes expanded underwater exploration one of the most credible predictions for the game (Rockstar Games, 2025; Wikipedia, 2026a; Wikipedia, 2026b). The Florida Reef's biodiversity and the cultural iconography of the Keys give Rockstar an unusually rich real-world template, and the studio's history of field-research-driven environmental design indicates the subsurface biome may rival the land map in detail.
Rockstar Games (2025) Grand Theft Auto VI [Official website]. Available at: https://www.rockstargames.com/VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026a) 'Grand Theft Auto VI', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2026b) 'Grand Theft Auto V', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_V (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (n.d.) Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Available at: https://floridakeys.noaa.gov/ (Accessed: 14 May 2026).