developers Rockstar Games have confirmed the game’s map is twice as large as , and is far more detailed.

takes place in a fictionalised version of Florida known as Leonida, and fans have been speculating about the size of the game map ever since Rockstar released the first few teaser images.

Last year, fan-project GTA6 Mapping used the two teaser trailers and various game screenshots to estimate that the world of was 2.7 times bigger than its 2013 predecessor.

In a new interview with , Rockstar Games has now confirmed that the speculation was true and the map is twice as big as the one in . It’s also going to be a lot more detailed.

“This new world is different,” said Rockstar North co-studio head Aaron Garbut “We obsessed about every part – the rooftops, the alleys, the internals and everything in between to the point we hit a critical mass with the numbers of our interiors, and you start to feel the buildings are more real inside and out. This world is a cohesive whole with the density of content and a hand-crafted quality to every bit.”

Elsewhere in the cover feature, Rockstar Games confirmed will include over 170 different animal species, a massive selection of clothing and accessories as well as an advanced weather system that will occasionally cause hurricanes to tear through Leonida. “As the pressure for us on this project is huge, we dealt with that by doing our best to overdeliver,” Garbut continued. “Normally you compromise scale for detail or detail for interaction, but with this project we went the other way. Everything is dialed up:  detail, scope, breadth, scale, interaction and density. I don’t think we have ever created anything close to this before.”

Meanwhile, a resurfaced leak has some fans convinced Rockstar’s next project will be a sequel to 2011’s detective adventure title L.A. Noire.