Leonida Keys

The Keys are Leonida's holiday coast, running along the Atlantic and Gulf sides: resort towns, beach bars, dive boats and water sports.

They're also where Jason was working for drug runners before the story starts, and where Brian Heder still pushes product out of a boat yard. The tourists and the smugglers are using the same water.

Brian's yard has a name now, too. The launch trailer opens on it, and the roof says Brian's Marina, with boats racked up beside the shed (Brian's page has the frame).

Why the real Keys suit smuggling

The Florida Keys are a chain of islands joined by one road running out to sea, with open water on both sides and the Caribbean beyond. That geography made them one of the busiest smuggling routes in the United States for decades. A small boat leaving a shallow harbour at night is very hard to find, and the distances are short.

So you get a place where the holiday trade and the trafficking trade have lived side by side, pretty openly, for two generations, often using the same marinas and now and then the same people. Rockstar hasn't had to make much up. A boat yard that also runs product is close to documentary.

Driving a chain of islands

A chain of islands is an unusual thing to drive. Everything runs in a line, there's water on both sides the whole time, and you've got far fewer ways out than you'd get in a city grid. If the evidence-based wanted system works the way it's been shown, being chased along a causeway with nowhere to turn off is a very different problem from being chased through Vice City.

And the causeway's real, in game terms. One runs out to the Keys from the mainland, and you can see it in Trailer 1 (our regions guide).

It also puts boats at the centre of things. Grand Theft Auto has always had boats and hardly ever needed them. Starting the game somewhere the water is the road changes that.

Under the water and under a storm

Scuba diving is in official material, and GamesRadar reports that an oxygen meter takes the place of the stamina bar while you're under (our activities list). In a place where half the map's water, that's a lot of map you can go down into.

One of Game Informer's twelve new screenshots from 29 September is the first official look at the Keys in bad weather. A seaplane flies over the island chain and the causeway bridges while a storm front sits over part of it, with two bolts of lightning coming down, and the water elsewhere still clear (what's in the screenshots). Game Informer's cover story says the game has localised weather, hurricanes included.

Edge's 29 October cover feature, from a demo Rockstar showed the magazine, adds a detail that matters out here. It reports that land shelters the water next to it, so conditions for a boat change depending on where you are, and that aircraft get turbulence, with a bit of damage if you sit in a bad storm too long. Out here you're mostly on a boat or in a seaplane, so you'd feel both.

Starting outside the city

Rockstar has a habit of opening away from the main city. A big part of Trevor's material in Grand Theft Auto V was based in the desert town of Sandy Shores, and Red Dead Redemption 2 spent its whole first chapter in the mountains before letting you anywhere near a town. Starting in the Keys gives you somewhere to come from when you finally get to Vice City.

What isn't known

Rockstar hasn't said how far the Keys stretch, how many settlements are on them, or whether the chain is one continuous run or broken up. No town names on the Keys have been confirmed by Rockstar yet. We also don't know how often storms roll through, or how rough the water gets for a small boat when one does.