GTA 6: Rockstar opens up to LOVE Magazine, Lucia is from Liberty City 🗽

LOVE Magazine has published a long interview with Rockstar Games about GTA 6, with 4 new images of Lucia and Jason. Here is everything we learned.

🎙️ Fashion and culture magazine LOVE landed a major interview about GTA 6, published on October 5, 2026 and conducted by journalist Kacion Mayers. It accompanies the magazine's autumn-winter issue, with Lucia and Jason on the cover.

Six team members answer: Rob Nelson and Aaron Garbut, co-studio heads of Rockstar North, Michael Kane (art), Rupert Humphries (narrative) and game writers Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern and Alexa D'Agostino.

Lucia, a heroine from Liberty City

This is the most surprising detail of the interview. Game writer Alexa D'Agostino says she drew on the women she knows, starting with her mother, an immigrant who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, "close to Lucia's hometown of Liberty City".

Her mother raised her to be "rowdy, kind, but not to take any shit", and she related a lot to Lucia. That, she says, is how you get a protagonist who can stand tall next to Arthur Morgan (Red Dead Redemption 2) and Niko Bellic (GTA IV). Fellow writer Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern praises the actress who plays Lucia, who "brought a lot to the character".

Rupert Humphries sums up the duo: the two characters had to complement each other and push and pull each other through the story. Lucia wanted a better life and would not let any obstacle stop her.

Jason: "no statement", it is up to the player

The journalist brings up Jason's past, including his stint in the Army, and asks whether it was written as a story of failed social mobility. Rupert Humphries replies that Rockstar did not want to make any kind of statement with that backstory.

Jason turns to drug trafficking and becomes a bank robber because of his material circumstances. But it is largely up to the player to decide whether he had to, or whether he is simply wired differently from other people.

Raul, the mentor who embodies Vice City

GTA 6's story is built as a Bonnie and Clyde-style tale: young people, neither too experienced nor jaded, pushing a crime spree to its limit without worrying about the consequences.

Hence Raul: an older mentor who brings Jason and Lucia into the large-scale heists you expect from a big crime saga. He also embodies Vice City and its Miami cool, with all the local and criminal knowledge the duo lacks when they arrive.

The American Dream, GTA 6 style

The American Dream runs through the whole series. For Rupert Humphries, GTA IV already told an immigrant's story about the illusion of America as a land of opportunity, and GTA V doubled down with its cynicism.

Today, the dream may be more modest: a house for your family and your loans paid off, rather than wild success. But maybe just as out of reach for the average person. And Miami and Southern Florida are on the front line between astronomical wealth and unbounded ambition: "a pressure cooker" for all kinds of insanity.

Florida research trips: helicopter, cops… and Beyoncé

Every Rockstar game starts with research trips. Aaron Garbut describes the first one: a small group driving from Miami through nearby towns and the Florida Keys down to Key West, days on the road with friends.

With some of the art directors, he spent a day hanging out of the side of a helicopter to film the Everglades and the city from the air. They ended up hovering over a stadium during a concert… Beyoncé's. "I think we made the local news the next day," he jokes.

The team also rode with cops and with gang members: lovely people, he says, but stories and places that could be terrifying. Miami is "those extremes": incredible wealth, incredible poverty, excess and hustle, and it all finds its way into the game in very direct ways.

Michael Kane, on the art side, says Florida's wealth of reference is "a blessing". Clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics: those details make the characters feel authentic, interesting and diverse, and represent all the tones of Leonida.

Ambrosia, politics and conspiracy theories

In Ambrosia, a town inspired by Clewiston and Lake Okeechobee, the journalist spotted a "Vote Erin Henshaw" sign backed by a company called Allied Crystals. Is politics central to GTA 6?

Rupert Humphries says Rockstar does not target any particular person, event or movement. But Florida gives them plenty to fill the world with characters and culture wars. Those stories come through election signs, campaign robocalls, radio commercials and even political talk shows on the radio.

The method stays the same: take an issue, then blow up the part they find interesting until its ridiculousness becomes clear, and hopefully funny. The team also had fun with conspiracy theories, creating its own overblown versions rather than copying reality.

How Rockstar builds GTA 6: eight-week milestones

Rob Nelson describes a highly iterative process. The team first picks the location, soaks it up on site, then lays out the major story beats on the map.

The game then grows through eight-week milestones: each time, the team pulls sections of the game together, evaluates them and takes notes for the next one, "one obsessive day at a time". Even with a much bigger team, Rockstar holds on to a singular creative vision and a consistent tone.

The studio also discusses realism: it helps immersion, but too much can feel tedious. It is all about balance.

The voices of the street: pedestrians, ads and radio

What brings the city to life is also pedestrian dialogue, advertising and radio. Rockstar has a dedicated team of pedestrian dialogue writers in LA, plus advertising and comedy writers across New York, LA and London.

"None of us see it as background!" Rupert Humphries insists. To discover the first stations, read our article on GTA 6's first 6 radio stations.

Where to read the full interview?

The full interview is online on LOVE Magazine's website. It is taken from the LOVE A/W 27 issue, available to order at KD Presse.

👉 The 4 new images are also in our GTA 6 gallery, under Love Magazine.

Source: LOVE Magazine, "Is this the American dream?", interview by Kacion Mayers, October 5, 2026.