Weather in Grand Theft Auto VI is not just a backdrop. It pushes back. That is the word from Rockstar North in the new issue of Edge magazine.
Co-studio head Aaron Garbut talked Edge through the system. Fellow co-studio head Rob Nelson played the game for 90 minutes with no script while they talked. The feature adds detail to what Game Informer already showed. Storms, hurricanes and moving cloud cover are in. Now we know how they hit the world.
Clouds that move on their own
GTA V used fixed weather presets. Sunny, rainy or overcast. GTA VI drops that. Clouds move on their own. Wind, humidity, fog, time of day and season all shape them.
The weather then shapes what you drive, fly and sail. A sunny sky can turn while you play. The change is gradual, not a sudden switch.
Storms you can watch coming
You may stand in sunshine and see a storm forming in the distance. Drive toward it and the world changes step by step. Roads get wet. Buildings keep dripping after the rain stops. Surfaces dry at different rates.
People react too. Pedestrians look for shelter as the weather turns. The storm feels like an event in the world, not a filter over it.
Rough water and rough skies
Wind moves trees, clouds and waves. Islands and buildings can shelter stretches of water. That changes how a boat handles in bays and along shorelines. Garbut put it plainly. Depending on where you are in your boat, you will skip over the waves or get rocked around by them.
Pilots face the same idea in the air. Fly a plane or a helicopter through a storm and the weather will buffet it. Stay in bad conditions long enough and the aircraft may take light damage.
What we still do not know
Edge does not say how long storms last. It does not say how far the damage can go. It does not say how much missions will lean on the weather. Those answers come when the game launches on November 19.
Until then the picture is clear. Leonida is a place where the sky is part of the gameplay.
See the full state in our GTA VI maps guide. Our 12 new screenshots roundup showed the first look at the weather. The Edge preview roundup has the other big details from the magazine.
