Rockstar’s full LOVE interview: research trips, satire, Raul and the writers behind Leonida’s chatter

LOVE magazine has published its full interview with Rockstar Games online, the same text that ran in its autumn issue on October 5, 2026. Kacion Mayers spoke to Rob Nelson and Aaron Garbut, co-studio heads of Rockstar North, Michael Kane, vice president of art, narrative chief Rupert Humphries and game writers Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern and Alexa D’Agostino. Our first article about the issue covered the lines other outlets quoted; below is the rest.

Eight-week milestones

Nelson described how a GTA comes together. Once the location is picked, the team researches it, decides which areas and people to include and which characters can carry the player through the widest range of experiences, then plots the main story beats on the map. The game is built in eight-week milestones: each time, agreed sections are pulled together, reviewed and turned into notes for the next milestone (fact in the registry). The team has grown a lot, he said, but the game still has to feel consistent in tone and follow one creative vision.

Florida from a car and a helicopter

Garbut said every game starts with research trips. For GTA 6 a small group drove from Miami through nearby towns and the Florida Keys to Key West, recording everything on cameras and phones; larger groups followed and went deeper. He and some art directors spent a day hanging out of a helicopter to film the Everglades and the city, and ended up hovering over a stadium during a concert that turned out to be Beyoncé’s; he thinks they made the local news. The team also travelled with police officers and with gang members. More on the research in how Rockstar built Leonida.

Clothes, hair and make-up

Michael Kane said Florida’s variety is a gift for the art team. Characters need a visual shorthand, so the detail goes into clothing, styling, cosmetics and hairstyles. That is what makes people in Vice City, the Keys, the Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga look authentic and different from each other.

How the satire works

Humphries said the writers are led by what makes them laugh and want to surprise players. Because the game takes years to make, they avoid trends that burn out in six months. They took broader things instead, such as conspiracy theories and strange public reactions to everyday events, and made their own exaggerated versions. The team still has many British members, but there are Americans too, and the aim is a place people want to spend hours in.

Jason, Lucia and the American Dream

Humphries repeated that the American Dream may be more modest now, a house and paid-off loans (fact in the registry), and called Miami and southern Florida a front line between huge wealth and unlimited ambition. The writers didn’t want Jason’s backstory to make a statement, he said: Jason turns to drug trafficking and bank robbery because of his material circumstances, and it is up to the player to decide whether he has to or is simply wired differently (fact in the registry). Lucia had to be someone who wants a better life and won’t let obstacles stop her; the contrast between the two grew out of writing them together.

Gauvey-Kern said the actress who plays Lucia brought a lot to the character. D’Agostino based Lucia on women she knows, including her own mother, an immigrant who grew up in Newark, near Lucia’s hometown of Liberty City.

Raul the mentor

A Bonnie-and-Clyde story is about young people who aren’t yet jaded, Humphries said, so the writers needed an older mentor to bring them into the large heists and set pieces of a crime saga. Raul Bautista plays that role: he embodies Vice City and has the local and criminal knowledge Jason and Lucia lack (fact in the registry).

Politics on signs and on the radio

Asked about a “Vote Erin Henshaw” sign in Ambrosia, Humphries said GTA has never focused much on national politics and that Rockstar avoids being specific about any real person, event or movement. Florida still gives the writers plenty of culture wars, and they come through election signs, campaign robocalls, radio commercials and political talk shows on the radio (fact in the registry). The goal, in his words, is to make everything satirical and larger than life rather than just hold up a mirror.

The writers behind the noise

Pedestrian dialogue in GTA 6 has its own team of writers in Los Angeles, and advertising and comedy writers work in New York, Los Angeles and London (fact in the registry). “None of us see it as background,” Humphries said. Bloomberg separately reports that Rockstar set up a production team in Los Angeles for non-player characters (the report). The first six stations where those ads and talk shows will play are in our article on GTA 6 radio.