I Grew Up in Miami, and GTA 6’s Vice City Is Almost Too Accurate

The much-anticipated, surprisingly controversial Grand Theft Auto 6 “extended look” just dropped on Netflix, and while I may not completely agree with the marketing philosophy, I did wind up logging on to the platform and watching it. Taking the 27 minutes of in-engine GTA 6 footage at face value, I have to say I’m quite impressed.

Something that especially blew me away, even though I expected nothing less, is Grand Theft Auto 6‘s incredible fidelity and attention to detail. It appears that Rockstar has very much picked up the gauntlet it threw down with the insanely realistic Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s graphically stunning, but that’s not what surprises me. What surprises me is just how true-to-life Vice City, Rockstar’s analog to Miami, seems to be. As someone who holds the city very dear to his heart, and who lived there for several years, I’m struck by how authentic this virtual rendition looks and feels.

I Know Miami, and GTA 6’s Vice City Is Basically It

Rockstar hasn’t visited Vice City since 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, whose rudimentary sixth-generation graphics make it quaint by modern standards. Rockstar’s more recent metropolitan area, Grand Theft Auto 5‘s Los Santos, is a fairly accurate representation of Los Angeles, its own real-world counterpart, but I admit I was slightly worried about how the developer would handle Miami. It would have been relatively easy for Rockstar to just make GTA 6‘s Vice City a quirkier, crazier version of Los Santos, differentiated by little more than some Cuban influences and caricatures like “Florida Man.”

Miami is a very specific kind of town, markedly different from other coastal cities in the United States. It’s not really anything like LA, but I’ve seen countless movies and TV shows that, perhaps unwittingly, seem to imply this. This could very well be a result of the practicalities associated with shooting movies and TV shows. Showbusiness is most often conducted in LA, which is apparently close enough to Miami for a lot of people. At any rate, based on what I’ve seen so far, it seems like GTA 6 has gotten Miami right on a deep, specific level.

Vice City certainly has the Miami look down pat: the pastel-colored stucco buildings of the game’s downtown areas, the squat, juicy palm trees that differ from the West Coast’s more lithe and delicate plants, the uniform rows of single-story houses in the nearby suburbs… all feel strikingly true to life. But what really sells me on Vice City as a heightened version of Miami is how it seems to engulf your other senses. The booming Cuban music that permeates every city block, the liveliness and constant movement of some of Earth’s Greatest Partiers, and the overwhelming humidity, communicated by some impressively sweaty-looking GTA 6 NPCs, are just as much a part of Miami as its Spanish-inspired architecture or picturesque coastline.

Then there are the many bizarre characters of Florida, which have dominated countless sensational headlines over the years. But the state isn’t just backwoods, alligator taming men and elderly women weaponizing hammers. Actually, Miami itself hardly has any of these sorts of personalities. Rather, the city beckons the drinkers, the attention-lovers, the young and reckless businessmen who always gave me the impression, even as I observed them from afar as a child in restaurants, of dogs having just caught a car and are holding on, mouth first, for dear life.

These are the people I think of when I recall my early life in Miami, people whose vibrancy was at once alluring and intimidating, threatening to sweep me away by virtue of their sheer vitality, or embarrass me with their eccentricities. Grand Theft Auto 6‘s extended look gave me a glimpse of such characters, like Brian and Lori, who remind me of the soused retirees I’d see falling out of their chairs at dinner, and Andres, who’s reminiscent of the kind of man I would admire from afar as a child, but worry about as an adult.

I Need to See the Rest of Grand Theft Auto 6’s Florida

I’ll admit I may be letting the GTA 6 hype get to me just a tad. While I’m confident that Rockstar will deliver on this new-and-improved version of Vice City, I also recognize that what was revealed in this recent Netflix-exclusive trailer is merely a curated collection of clips showcasing the very best that the game’s map has to offer. And as for the personalities I’ve mentioned, it’s hard to know just how far this quality will extend beyond missions, cutscenes, and other scripted encounters.

More than this, I’m curious to see how Rockstar handles the areas beyond Vice City, as we know the game will include more rural towns and even an approximation of Florida’s famous Everglades. Granted, I’m much more familiar with the Miami area than Florida’s bush, but I have a certain emotional attachment to it nonetheless. Because much like Miami, the entire state of Florida is characterized by highly specific elements that aren’t necessarily shared by its neighboring states.

The lawless nature of rural Florida has been memed to death, but there’s truth to it. Coasting through the Everglades or taking an out-of-state roadtrip, you can easily find unusual or striking sights, from remote, shack-like eateries exclusively serving frog and alligator, or thick swamps that seem to go on forever. In the case of these kinds of locales, I imagine that Rockstar’s experience with the untamed wilderness in Red Dead Redemption 2 will go a long way. Here’s hoping the developer manages to treat these less-populated areas with the same attention and care as the dazzling Vice City.

Systems

Released

November 19, 2026

ESRB

Rating Pending – Likely Mature 17+