GTA 6 Weather Rebuilt With Hurricanes and Rainbows
Rockstar re-engineered its weather systems beyond Red Dead Redemption 2, adding storms, updrafts and persistent rainbows to Leonida.
Rockstar Games has re-engineered its weather system for GTA 6, going beyond what players saw in Red Dead Redemption 2. In an interview with Game Informer, Owen Shepherd, the studio's vice president of art for lighting and rendering, described the range of conditions players will meet while roaming Leonida, from high temperatures and heavy rain through to hurricanes. The system has been rebuilt to make conditions more dynamic and unpredictable than before. Real cloud formations float overhead, and large-scale storms can and will occur across the area, so the weather is meant to feel like a constant, shifting presence.
Wind and rain are the clearest demonstrations of the overhaul. Breezes will show through people's hair and ripples on the water, along with updrafts and other more specific effects. Downpours leave puddles behind and produce realistic, persistent rainbows, so a quiet drive after a bloody mission can end beneath a rainbow on the horizon. Shepherd framed the changes as an attempt to achieve a sense of scale the studio had not managed before, and the work sits alongside the many small details Rockstar is known for. Whether the overhaul truly lands will only become clear once players have the game in their hands.
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- red-dead-redemption-2
Sources
Where this story ran: 2 outlets on 30 September 2026. The summary above is written by GamersGuild; the links go to the original reports.
Games in this post
Red Dead Redemption 2
Red Dead Redemption 2 follows Arthur Morgan and a gang of outlaws through the last years of the American frontier, with a camp to feed, a horse to keep alive and towns that remember what you did there. It is deliberately slow: most of the game is travel.