Before the issue came out, the honest answer about animals in GTA 6 was that there would be many of them. The cover story of Game Informer’s issue 382 turned it into a number: more than 170 species across land, air and sea, several of which have never been in a Rockstar game.
Who lives in Leonida
By Rockstar’s count the 170 break down into more than 60 kinds of birds, more than 30 land mammals, and the fish and reptiles that fill the water. The named ones are the animals a Floridian would expect: flamingos, manatees, pelicans and alligators.
Next to them live the species Florida did not ask for. Rockstar names green iguanas, cane toads, feral cats and rhesus macaques, all of them real residents of the state and all of them brought in by people.
Rare, Discoverable, Legendary
Some animals carry a category: Rare, Discoverable or Legendary, and those can be tracked. Rockstar is keeping their names secret until release. In Red Dead Redemption 2 legendary animals were one-off encounters with their own trail and their own pelt.
How this meets hunting and the zoo, Rockstar hasn’t explained. IGN reported earlier that each species you find is ticked off a list, as in Red Dead Redemption 2, and that you can study animals in the wild or at the zoo.
Fur, feathers and light
The technical part builds on Red Dead Redemption 2 as well: new hair and fur systems for coats and pelts, separate feather types for birds, and surfaces that catch light the way animals do, with iridescence, bioluminescence and translucency. A beetle shell and a fish in shallow water need different ones of those.
The short version is in the database entry on wildlife and the zoo.
