GTA 6 completely “re-engineered” Rockstar’s weather systems to “achieve a sense of scale we haven’t felt before,” adding hurricanes, rainbows and heavy rain

If you thought Red Dead Redemption 2‘s heavy winds and even heavier rain looked impressive, you might be happy to learn that Rockstar Games went back and “re-engineered our weather system” for GTA 6. Hurricanes, rainbows and “vertiginous cumulonimbus clouds” are all part of the upcoming open worlder.

That’s according to the studio’s vice president of art for lighting and rendering, Owen Shepherd, who spoke to Game Informer about Grand Theft Auto 6’s supposedly much-improved tech.

“We have re-engineered our weather system to make everything much more localized and persistent, and really wanted the world to feel dynamically solid and achieve a sense of scale we haven’t felt before,” Shepherd told the magazine. “The world features new fully dynamic cloudscapes that roll across the map, these give us a broad spectrum of weather from the clear blue skies of a Miami winter to the vertiginous cumulonimbus clouds with sporadic lightning that you see most afternoons in the Floridian summer and autumn.”

The “localized and persistent” weather is particularly interesting. You can apparently take a break from robbing shops and doomscrolling through in-game social media apps to witness a rain shower pouring over a totally different area – all while you’re as dry as a crunchy autumn leaf. The after effects of that faraway storm (rainbows and wet pavements and puddles) will stay well after it’s subsided, as well.

All cool details, but I suspect we’re all curious about what those hurricanes and thunderstorms actually look like. Rockstar isn’t giving much away for now, though Shepherd did describe the intended effect. “Heavy clouds, strong winds, dense atmospherics, and a lot of rain combine so that everything is dripping wet, water is gushing off roof edges and lampposts, thunder rumbles and flashes of lightning light up the clouds dramatically,” he said.

Rockstar’s also omitting how these updated weather systems might impact how you move around the world. Are thunderstorms purely aesthetic or will the wet roads affect my tires? What happens if I fly a plane into a hurricane or parachute during Leonida’s windier days? I suspect the answer is that I’ll end up ‘Wasted’ before long. GTA 6 comes to PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on 19 November, so there’s not long left until we can find out for ourselves.

Elsewhere in the Game Informer spotlight, the studio confirmed there’s over 170 animal species in the world, including 60 different birds and more than 30 land mammals. Underwater scuba-diving is also back, so expect manatees and jellyfish and whales. GTA 6 is borrowing another Red Dead Redemption 2 feature, as well, in the form of discoverable animals you can study and Legendary animals the studio’s still keeping a lid on.