Transcription
This is the true scale of the GTA San Andreas map versus GTA 5. It feels completely wrong. GTA San Andreas felt so much bigger. So, I decided to investigate this phenomenon. And what I discovered was 10 ways that Rockstar used to trick you and me into believing this was the case.
>> Oh, hell no, man. Obviously, first and most obvious, at the very beginning of the game, all three major cities are locked behind bridges, meaning from the beginning of the game, all you have access to is Los Santos. But Los Santos is extremely dense as it is. It's filled with distinct neighborhoods, all with their own gangs and territories, and there's activities to do throughout it. And it truly does feel like if the game was just Los Santos and the surrounding areas on its own, it still would have felt like a completely huge game. And that's because at the time when GTA San Andreas had first released, GTA Vice City had come out just 2 years earlier. And as it turns out, if you combine the entire land mass of GTA Vice City and put it all together, it ends up smaller than just Los Santos and the surrounding areas in San Andreas. So yeah, but then just as you're getting sick and tired of Los Santos, the game throws a completely new area at you with a whole range of new activities to do and fun things to explore. By the time we eventually unlock all of the islands in the game, it physically feels like weeks or months have passed.
Here's where things get interesting. When you compare San Andreas to GTA 5, GTA 5 is built like a real place. Things exist in places that you would expect them to exist. Nothing necessarily seems out of place, and the transitions between the terrain and locations is very subtle and realistic. GTA San Andreas, on the other hand, is literally built like a theme park. The variety in San Andreas changes so quickly. Every few minutes, the game is throwing something new and fresh at you. And the game is always constantly asking itself, "How can I make the world the most fun it can possibly be for the player?" Rather than GTA 5, which for realism purposes always asks, what would realistically exist here? In San Andreas, one minute you're driving through dense urban streets. A few minutes later you're climbing winding countryside roads surrounded by giant forests and farms. Then suddenly you might find yourself in a dusty desert town with giant rock formations surrounding you with tons of quirky landmarks before every single turn. The transitions between all of these locations are not subtle because they're not supposed to be.
In GTA 5, things are a lot slower than that. For example, in GTA 5, you'll be driving out towards the Alamo Sea, and you will slowly see a transition from the grass turning into sand, and the environment will slowly change in front of you in a way that feels realistic. Whereas in San Andreas, for example, you could be stood right at the water's edge and just a few meters in front of you, you can see the other bio. How did they still manage to pull off a feeling of it being so large? By design, the game purposely uses draw distance fog to prevent you from seeing things that are further away. Not only does this hide the map's true size, but it also helps you get lost. And getting lost amongst the world that Rockstar created for us is all part of the magic. And it's something that doesn't actually happen quite as often in GTA 5 for one very important reason. In GTA 5, no matter where you're standing, 90% of the time, you can see physically where the world ends. While stood on Mount Chiliad, I can see all the surrounding mountain ranges that reveal the edge of the island. Even if I'm stood on the Vinewood sign, I can see all the way down to the airport. And if I turn around just 180°, I can see Mount Chiliad. If San Andreas didn't have the fog, this is what it would look like. You would be able to see all corners of the map at any given time.
But it's not just the fog, it's how the roads are designed as well. GTA 5's biggest fault is the fact that there is a giant highway that goes around the entirety of the map, allowing you to access all important locations by just driving on one road. kind of eliminates all of the fun. Now, I will admit GTA San Andreas, yes, does have highways that do connect all of the major regions together, but if you take a closer look at some of these highways, you'll notice something very interesting. They're still quick, so they're still relevant as highways as maybe being your quickest route to get somewhere, but they're not just a straight one-way direction where you can just sit on the same road and mindlessly hold the accelerator down. Say, for example, in GTA 5, I want to get from this location to this location. Now, even though Mount Chiliad is completely obstructing my route to Pito Bay, unfortunately, it doesn't take long before I'm able to get onto a highway and just hold the trigger down until I reach my destination, which is very, very boring.
In GTA San Andreas, there is also a point A, and I want to get to point B. Now, there are highways that connect it, but if you look very closely at the way these highways are designed, you will see that it's not quite as direct as it was in GTA 5. Take this highway for example, which ends around here, which would require me to somehow figure out a way to join another highway a little bit later on in order to navigate the last part of my journey. Now, that's just one option. I could either go that way or I could whip out the map from my PlayStation 2 game case and I could go the Beeline way. Explore the world that Rockstar has made for me. And in order to do that, it would require me to drive through winding roads, giant forests, navigate huge cliff faces that I can't just beline it through because if I did, I would end up falling off of a cliff. The really sad thing is it's not like GTA 5 is completely absent from locations like this. In fact, GTA 5 has some of the most beautiful locations in any video game I've ever seen. Take Raten Canyon for example. If only the game actually required me to drive through here more often.
And here's where the main problem really comes from. Well, it all comes from the game's GPS. You see, GTA San Andreas doesn't tell you which route is the most optimal to get from point A to point B. Instead, you either have to keep pausing the game and hoping that you're heading in the general right direction of where you need to get to, or like I said, you whip out the actual physical map the game came with like a goddamn explorer. GTA 5 has amazing canyons, amazing giant hills, and winding roads. But if the GPS isn't telling you to go down that route, then you're never going to explore it. and your route is always going to be the most optimal, boring, and the same every time. And I get it. It's not like it's Rockstar's fault. They're trying to parody the modern day where everybody values convenience and saving their time.
Earlier on, we mentioned how the fog basically reduces your view distance and makes it feel like the world is bigger than it is. But there's another trick that Rockstar uses that's even more important than that, and that is the actual terrain itself. Many times, you'll be driving through the world of San Andreas and you'll be deep inside of a canyon, unable to see past your actual location. Maybe you're driving through the desert and you have these giant orange rocks either side of you, preventing you from seeing where the next highway or main road is going to be. Giant rivers and lakes that completely cut your access off. Meaning, if you want to reach the other side, you have to basically do a detour, which takes even longer to get there. And this is actually really important because the rivers and the oceans in San Andreas are also done far better than GTA 5's. Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the ocean in GTA 5. It's one of the most beautiful artistic things that Rockstar have ever added into any of their games to date. I love the fact that you can get into a submarine, you can go underwater, and you can explore the ocean bed. Yeah, they did a great job. Except there's a huge problem with the ocean in GTA 5. It just surrounds the island. There's no water causing an obstruction for you. Yeah, okay, sure, there's the Alamo Sea, but you tell me with a straight face, is there anything important in this location here that the Alamo Sea is really blocking? No, if there was a more important location somewhere around this radius, then fine. But any location I want to reach, the Alamo Sea never prevents an obstacle for me. And neither do any of the rivers or oceans in the game whatsoever.
Whereas in San Andreas, it's kind of the total opposite. You see, you'll often find yourself in the woods driving through trying to find some kind of shortcut to reach the next main road and then all of a sudden you find out, oh, I can't go this way because there's a giant river blocking me. It turns out San Andreas has a lot of bridges. 44 bridges to be exact. And when there's a lot of bridges and a lot of obstructions and a lot of rivers blocking your direct route to somewhere, well, that often requires a lot of time to circumn them. Very often in San Andreas, you'll be stood in location A and you can literally see where you want to get to. But in order to get to that location and actually keep your car in one piece and not just directly swim, you have to now divert yourself to a local bridge, cross the bridge, and head back on yourself just to get there. In GTA 5, this never happens. Water does not become a problem.
And have you ever noticed that the landmarks in GTA San Andreas really help sell the scale of the world? because the game features iconic landmarks where in real life you know the true distance between them and you know that they're very far away. But take a note of how Rockstar placed these landmarks because they did it very strategically. Mount Chiliad is located way in the bottom corner of the world as far bottom left as you can get. The next major landmark is the Golden Gate Bridge, which just so happens to be the complete opposite side of the map, way up in the top left, as far away as you can possibly get from Mount Chiliad. Well, then what about Las Venturus? They're located as physically far away from the last two I just mentioned, way up in the top right hand corner of the world now. Yeah. So Rockstar had placed all of these landmarks very purposely in almost the exact far corners away from each other. And by placing all of these very iconic real life landmarks as far away as they physically could from one another in the game, it helps sell the illusion that those distances really are far away. Almost every location, small town through town in the game has something worth stopping for. Whereas in GTA 5, the same can't really be said. I mean, grape seed, I mean, what the hell even is grape seed? Does anyone care about grape seed? I don't care about grape seed.
And as you drive through these areas in San Andreas, you may notice something very special. Each area has its own unique time cycle, its own unique feeling. If you're in Los Santos, you'll find it to be very blue and orange. You know the feeling. You know, like the first time we played this game, it had that piss filter all over it, that yellow coloring that's so engraved into our childhood memories. But by the time you get to San Fiero, turns out the time cycle and the color palette for San Fiero is actually purposely more blue and cold feeling. So, not only do you visually get to feel this change, but it also sells the illusion that maybe the weather here is completely different as well. And the same goes for the desert because by the time you make it to Bone County in Las Venturus, you'll often see heat waves and at nighttime the iconic purple sky which doesn't appear anywhere else in the game. It gives each location its own unique feeling, its own unique environment and weather feeling. It's the same thing they did in Red Dead Redemption 2, where considering that map is all fully accessible from the very beginning of the game as well, unlike GTA 5, it was done perfectly, where each region has its own weather type, and you can physically see the environment changing before you as you transition to these different areas. By giving each region its own visual identity and feel, Rockstar pulled off something really clever here.
But there's something else that all three distinct regions in the game also have besides time cycle that also plays a huge factor. Every location has its own major airport. And I'm not talking small runways like in GTA 5. San Andreas, on the other hand, has a major airport terminal in all three major cities. Their existence makes players mentally treat the cities as far apart, so long as the cities that they're located in definitely feel different as well. Flying between cities feels like a far greater distance than just flying between small air strips in the very same island. In GTA 5, you don't even have the function to fast travel via airports. Whereas in San Andreas, you can easily go to an airport, buy an airplane ticket, fly, watch the flight take place, and land in another airport, which is very immersive, and when we were kids, it really made the worlds feel huge.
Now, interiors are very important. GTA 5 has a lot of interiors, except 90% of the interiors in this goddamn game are restricted to missions, cutscenes, GTA Online. Sorry. And then the locations that you truly feel like you should be able to access in Free Rome, like fast food chains, which were accessible in San Andreas and were accessible in GTA 4. Well, if you try and go inside them in GTA 5, it's just a let down. Uh, what happened? What freaking happened? And it turns out San Andreas has a ton of interiors that you can explore. There's a lot of interiors in this game. To be fair, though, it's not Rockstar's fault. Every time Rockstar delivers a GTA game, they're truly pushing the technology they're working with to its absolute limits. So in reality, it turns out that the hardware limitations that Rockstar were presented with with GTA San Andreas actually turned out to be their biggest strength of all. The one thing that actually made this whole amazing game possible in the first place.