After the GTA 6 reveal, Rockstar North head Rob Nelson told IGN about the map and its content. According to him, the game will reward players for independent exploration:
There's a whole other world in Red Dead Redemption 2. GTA VI is very similar. There are a lot of things you'll discover on your own, and we won't necessarily guide you to them through missions, markers, or icons on the map. If you spend a little time exploring, you'll be richly rewarded. It's a big map, a very big map.
Nelson noted that the capabilities of PS5 and Xbox Series allowed the team to significantly expand the scale. GTA 6 will also feature more diverse NPCs with different heights and body types. Their animations now adapt to character models on the fly, which was previously impossible due to hardware limitations.
GTA 6 is a continuation of our team's movement in this direction. We are doing everything possible to create the biggest, deepest, most densely populated, and complex world we have ever created.