The real Florida behind Leonida: a guide to the prototypes

Rockstar never copies real cities one to one, but Leonida can be read as a map of Florida run through satire.

How Rockstar works with real places

Rockstar settled on its method long ago. The studio takes a real region, compresses the distances, keeps the most recognisable silhouettes and pushes local quirks to caricature. That is how Los Angeles became Los Santos in GTA V and New York became Liberty City in GTA IV.

Leonida is the same technique applied to an entire state. The six regions Rockstar described on the official site map neatly onto real parts of Florida. Below is what is known officially and what can be read from the footage. The latter is our reading, not a statement from the studio.

Vice City — Miami

This one is obvious, and was already obvious in 2002. Pastel deco hotel facades, neon signs and a waterfront promenade are Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. The glass business district across the bay is downtown Miami and Brickell. Yachts, the cruise port and beach parties are all real Miami, just louder.

The difference from the 2002 Vice City is that the target of the parody is no longer an era but today’s city: influencers by the pool, parties staged for social media, luxury that is shown off more than owned. Judging by the trailers, Vice City is the main stage for that satire.

The Leonida Keys — the Florida Keys

The chain of islands in the south of the state mirrors the Florida Keys — an archipelago tied to the mainland by the Overseas Highway and long bridges such as the famous Seven Mile Bridge. The trailers show the same low islands, bridges over turquoise water and small roadside bars.

For the story, no region matters more. According to the official profiles, Jason lives in the Keys and works for local smugglers, and his boss Brian Heder has been running drugs through the islands since the eighties. The real Keys were for decades a gateway for smuggling from the Caribbean, so the choice of where to start the story is unlikely to be an accident.

Grassrivers — the Everglades

The swamps in the west of the state are the Everglades, the vast wetland plain of south Florida. Airboats, alligators, sawgrass to the horizon and almost no roads — it is all in the trailers.

Even the name looks deliberate. In 1947 the writer and conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas called the Everglades a “river of grass”, and the phrase became something close to the swamp’s official nickname. “Grassrivers” reads as a direct nod.

In the game, a region like this will almost certainly play by different rules than the city: travel by water, poor visibility, wildlife. There is more on Leonida’s animals in a separate piece.

Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga

For the remaining three regions the matches are less direct, and here we are interpreting.

Port Gellhorn is a faded port town on the north-western coast. In tone it recalls the towns of the Florida Panhandle on the Gulf of Mexico: cheap motels, fishermen, a resort life that passed by long ago.

Ambrosia is an industrial town that the official material ties to sugar production and bikers. In reality Florida’s sugar belt lies south of Lake Okeechobee, and the town of Clewiston even calls itself “America’s Sweetest Town”. The satirical name Ambrosia — the food of the gods — fits that image perfectly.

Mount Kalaga is a national park of forests, rivers and relief. It is the freest liberty the map takes with geography: Florida is almost flat, and its highest point, Britton Hill, rises just 105 metres above sea level. Rockstar seems to have taken the spirit of north Florida’s forests and added height that is not there — for chases, views and variety.

What to expect from a map like this

If this reading is right, Leonida offers three very different environments: a dense, vertical city, islands of bridges and water, and wilderness of swamp and forest. GTA V also mixed city and countryside, but its countryside was mostly mountains and desert. Here water is the thread that ties the whole map together.

For players that means boats and airboats become a normal way to get around rather than a diversion, and chases will look different depending on the region. In September 2026 Rockstar reportedly confirmed that the map is roughly twice the size of GTA V’s — plenty of room for that variety.

And recognisability works the other way too: after release, many players will want to see the real Florida for the first time. It happened with Los Angeles after GTA V, when players went looking for places from the game.