#Gta san andrea stories full#
The maps in modern open-world games can typically be explored in full from the outset, but San Andreas uses its wanted system to carefully gate your progress, preventing you from immediately driving or flying across the whole world and pointlessly spoiling it for yourself. You still can't travel there without the police and army hounding you, but it's an exciting taste of things to come. As you explore this new landscape you catch tantalising glimpses of San Fierro across the bay, namely the towering Gant Bridge-the game's version of the Golden Gate. The game limits you here again, keeping you in the countryside as you work for, among others, stoner conspiracy theorist The Truth and foul-mouthed bank robber Catalina. In a dramatic change of scenery and atmosphere, the crowded urban setting you've grown used to is replaced by the isolated rural county of Whetstone-and suddenly the world feels massive. By the time CJ finally leaves Los Santos you feel like you've been there for the length of an entire GTA game, which makes those first steps into the countryside incredibly impactful. You might reach San Fierro or Las Venturas, but being constantly harassed by law enforcement and the military means it's not worth it. Travel beyond the city limits and you'll immediately earn a 6-star wanted level and be hunted mercilessly by waves of cops, FBI agents, and soldiers. The game confines you to Los Santos in the first act. The short draw distance, a technical compromise to allow a game of this size to run on PS2-era hardware, also adds to the sense of scale, obscuring the distance and making things feel further away.
When you're out in the middle of nowhere, you really do feel disconnected from civilization-more so than even GTA 5, whose deserts and forests never feel truly isolated. But the variety of terrain between the cities-including redwood forests, small country towns, and a sprawling desert-makes it feel much bigger than it actually is. You could fit the entire landmass into Grand Theft Auto 5's map several times over, and driving from one end to the other takes just 8 minutes. Related: The Magic Of Grand Theft Auto's Radio Stations Just a few years earlier, Liberty City felt like the biggest, most detailed virtual city that could ever exist-and now there were three of them in one game. But above all, it's the world that really sets it apart.
The sheer volume of ways to interact with the game was, and still is, remarkable. You can take control of a vast array of land, air, and sea vehicles. You have a ridiculously fine level of control over your character's fitness and appearance, with repeated trips to the gym or Burger Shot having the expected effect. There's a lot in San Andreas that took the open-world genre to new heights in 2004. Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas are satirical send-ups of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas respectively, encompassing the fictional state of San Andreas in the 1990s-and to this day it's the boldest, most ambitious thing the studio has ever done.
#Gta san andrea stories series#
But no one could have predicted that the next game in the series would feature not one, but three cities, with acres of desert and countryside in between. A year later it was Vice City, a garish '80s analogue of Miami. In 2001 we visited Liberty City, a contemporary spoof of New York City. After the success of GTA: Vice City, people wondered which caricature of an American metropolis Rockstar would take Grand Theft Auto players to next.