Rob Nelson: Vice City Is Twice the Size of Los Santos

Rob Nelson of Rockstar North has said on the record that Vice City is twice the size of Los Santos, that the built-up towns outside the city run to 11 times the equivalent in Grand Theft Auto V, and that the game opens in the Leonida Keys at Jason's house before letting the player go anywhere. He said it to a French cinema magazine that was let inside Rockstar North, and the interview has been sitting in public since 27 August 2026. CONFIRMED. This desk's editor fetched the English version of the piece at https://www.troiscouleurs.fr/cinema/we-saw-gtavi-running-at-rockstar-north-our-exclusive-preview-and-interview/ and received HTTP 200 at 114,197 bytes at 2026-09-28T03:25:06Z. The page is tagged rob nelson and labelled 28 MIN. Its standfirst reads, verbatim: "This summer, TROISCOULEURS was the only French-language media outlet granted access to the place where the most eagerly anticipated video game of the decade is being developed." TROISCOULEURS is the magazine of the French cinema group mk2. This is a hands-on preview with an on-record Rockstar interview. No part of it is leaked material. It can be linked and quoted freely, and this article quotes it. The scale quote, in full "Vice City is twice the size as Los Santos [GTAV main city], but the number of built-up towns outside the city is 11 times the size of GTAV in terms of the little towns you can come across! So you start way down here in the Keys for the first part of the game, and that's Jason's little house that you see in Trailer 2. And then the game just opens and you can go anywhere, anytime." The bracketed gloss on Los Santos is the magazine's, not this desk's. It is reproduced as printed. Four separate claims sit inside that paragraph, and they are worth separating because they are not equally precise. ClaimWhat it actually establishes Vice City is twice the size of Los SantosA ratio between two cities. No unit, no area figure. Built-up towns outside the city are 11 times GTA V'sA ratio described as being "in terms of the little towns you can come across". Whether it counts towns or measures area is not stated. The game starts in the Keys at Jason's houseA statement about the opening of the story, tied to a location shown in Trailer 2. "the game just opens and you can go anywhere, anytime"A statement about map access after the opening. No mechanics named. Buildings, and what is inside them Nelson on interiors, verbatim and in full: "You can enter a lot of buildings, a lot, a huge number." That is the whole quote. There is no number in it, no list of building types and no distinction drawn between mission interiors and free-roam interiors. This desk is printing it whole rather than paraphrasing it upward, because the repetition in it is the interesting part and a paraphrase would invent a figure that Nelson did not give. How the regions are blended Nelson on the problem of moving between environments, verbatim: "It was very challenging on Red Dead because it's a smaller map and with a lot of different sorts of regions and biomes that you have to traverse through and the way they had to blend them. The team gets better every time. They do it in a way that feels natural, but it's not one-to-one life-size." The last clause is the useful one for anyone trying to turn the "twice the size" figure into a real-world measurement. Nelson says the map is not one-to-one life-size. A ratio between two fictional cities cannot be converted into square kilometres of Florida on the strength of this interview, and this desk is not attempting it. What fills the space Two further quotes from the same page bear on how a larger map is meant to feel populated rather than empty. "The world is also a lot more unpredictable. You're not the only person with guns, you're not the only person capable of violence." "There are many emergent events that change the course of things." And on the surface detail, verbatim: "There are a lot of people working on lots of different things, brands, billboards, TV shows. If we can find a playful angle on something, and it fits in the world, it works. A lot of it is trial and error." Why this is surfacing now The piece is dated 27 August 2026. That is 32 days before this desk's fetch, which is this desk's own arithmetic. It resurfaced in the Grand Theft Auto community in late September and has been circulating since as though it were new. It is not new. It is a month-old interview that most of the English-speaking audience missed the first time, because it ran on the site of a French cinema magazine rather than on a games site. With 52 days to 19 November 2026, also this desk's own arithmetic, this remains the most detailed on-record Rockstar account of the map that exists in public. For what the community is building and discussing in the meantime, see this site's server list, and for the running log of verified claims, the news index. Limits, stated plainly "Twice the size" and "11 times" are Rob Nelson's words in an interview, not a Rockstar spec sheet. No unit is attached to either figure. This desk does not convert them into square kilometres, square miles or any other measure, and any article that does is adding a number that Nelson did not supply. The English page is a translation of a French original. The quotes above are quoted from the English page, which is what this desk fetched and read. A translated sentence is not the speaker's exact original wording, and anyone relying on the precise phrasing should read both versions. The piece is not breaking news. It was published on 27 August 2026 and resurfaced a month later. This article is about what a month-old interview says, and it is labelled that way rather than dressed up as a new disclosure. Rob Nelson's job title was not confirmed from a Rockstar source. The magazine gives it as Head of Development and Co-Studio Head at Rockstar North. This desk's editor read the magazine's page but did not verify that title against any Rockstar publication, so the title is carried as the magazine states it. Nothing here has been played by this desk. The hands-on session described in the piece was the magazine's, on a July afternoon, at Rockstar North. This desk has seen no build, and the only things verified above are what the magazine published and when. Retrieval method, disclosed. rockstargames.com/robots.txt disallows a named list of automated agents, including ClaudeBot. This desk's fetches, including the one recorded above, use a standard desktop browser user agent, and this desk discloses that in every batch rather than leaving a reader to guess.