Grassrivers

The name says it all: rivers of grass. Grassrivers is Rockstar’s take on the Everglades, a maze of channels, mangroves and shallow water where the road ends and the airboat begins. It is Leonida’s wildest natural environment, and the official materials left no doubt about the tone.

The screenshot published on the Rockstar site is a statement of intent: a chase between a pickup and a helicopter through the mud, with an alligator in the foreground watching, unimpressed. Wildlife not as set dressing but as a protagonist, and the sense that city rules do not count for much out here.

Of the page’s four official images, three show alligators. In one an airboat threads between them, shot from above; in another the police chase goes through; in the third, three mud-caked hunters pose on an airboat with a dead alligator and wildcat. Swamp hunting is on the official page, unmediated.

For anyone who loved the series’ wilderness, Grassrivers promises to be the most atmospheric and unpredictable part of the map: the place to disappear when things go wrong in Vice City, and the natural border with the industrial inland of Ambrosia. It is already traced on the interactive map; the real points of interest arrive at launch.