Sports and minigames

For most of the marketing this page was a list pieced together from reporting on preview footage. Game Informer's issue 382 cover story changed that. Rockstar's designers gave the magazine a list of activities, and Game Informer presented it as an excerpt, so it isn't the whole set.

What Rockstar named

On land: mini golf, billiards, gyms, zoos and base jumping. Golf shows up separately, among the map features, alongside farms, ranches and bass fishing. On the water the same list has kayaking, jet skiing, airboating and scuba diving. And on the road there's street and off-road racing, which has its own page.

Those are Rockstar's words, passed on by Game Informer, so they confirm the things exist. They don't tell you how any of them play. A zoo might be a place you can walk round, or it might be a minigame with a ticket.

Rob Nelson of Rockstar North added a detail in his demo with IGN on 7 October, as reported by Inven Global: pool, mini golf and kayaking are among the things Jason and Lucia can do together, and time spent together feeds the relationship.

Edge's issue 430 cover feature, out on 29 October and written from a Rockstar demo, fills in the shape of that. Edge reports the relationship runs on a four-point scale, raised by beach walks, cycling, the gym, driving around Leonida and time together outside missions. Its list of ordinary things to do also includes buying cigarettes and beer in shops, taking the train for the day and going to clubs. That's reported from the demo, and Rockstar hasn't published it.

What you can see in the screenshots

The daytime Vice City aerial has a basketball court in the middle of it with a game going on. Basketball isn't on Rockstar's list, so it stays scenery until somebody plays on it. One of the Cal Hampton screenshots has him playing pool in a bar, and since pool is now a named activity, that table's more than a prop. Game Informer's September screenshots have a second one, in a biker bar with neon and club patches on every jacket. The Ambrosia material includes the Thrillbilly Mud Club, first shown back in trailer one.

What the small games are for

Minigames are the connective tissue of a Rockstar game. Grand Theft Auto V had golf, tennis, darts and yoga, and nobody bought it for any of them. What they did was give the world something to do between missions that wasn't shooting, and that's what stops an open world feeling like a menu with scenery.

They also do quiet character work. Playing tennis with Michael's wife told you more about that marriage than the cutscenes did. This game has a tracked relationship at its centre and names pool and mini golf as things the couple do, so it looks set to use them the same way.

Why golf fits Florida

Golf is the obvious one, and the funniest. Florida has more golf courses than any other US state by a wide margin, and the sport's tied up with the retirement and property economy the game's clearly going to have opinions about. Mini golf is the tourist strip version of the same thing, and Florida's roadside courses, with their fibreglass volcanoes and pirate ships, are a genre of their own.

Base jumping is the odd one out in a flat state. It needs height, which in Leonida means the Vice City towers or Mount Kalaga. Grand Theft Auto V had parachuting from day one, so the mechanics aren't new. What Rockstar hasn't said is where the jumps are.

Stunt jumps, maybe

The launch trailer on 15 October has a dirt bike going off a ramp in real time, with no slow motion and no prompt on screen. Some coverage is calling that the return of stunt jumps. Rockstar hasn't, and our launch trailer breakdown leaves it open. The same trailer has Jason and Lucia jumping off a roof into a hotel pool together, which looks a lot more like a mission than a free roam stunt.

Probably no casino

The ESRB has rated the game M for Mature 17+, with seven descriptors: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, and Use of Drugs and Alcohol, plus an In-Game Purchases notice. We went through every rating when they appeared.

None of the Grand Theft Auto 6 age ratings shown so far carries a gambling descriptor. Red Dead Redemption 2, Red Dead Online and the PS5 release of Grand Theft Auto V all do, and in Grand Theft Auto V's case that's down to the casino, with its poker, blackjack and roulette.

Our inference is that the base game has no casino-style betting. It's only an inference, and nobody's confirmed it. A rating covers what was submitted, and there's no online mode at launch for it to cover. Whatever an online mode ends up including would be rated when it arrives.

Shown in the Extended Look

Two of the things Rockstar named to Game Informer turn up in its own August footage. A skydive from high above Vice City ends under an orange parachute canopy over the bay, and that's the closest the footage gets to the base jumping on Rockstar's list. And a man with a basketball walks up to a hoop fixed under a stilt house on the water.

What isn't known

Rockstar has named these activities but hasn't shown any of them as a playable system. We don't know whether golf is a full course game, whether billiards and mini golf can be played against each other or only against the computer, what a zoo visit involves, or where base jumps can start. Game Informer's list is an excerpt, so there could be more. Basketball hasn't been named at all, and stunt jumps haven't been confirmed. We don't know how much each activity counts on Edge's four-point relationship scale. And nobody's said either way whether any form of betting exists in the game, on cards, races or anything else.