With GTA 6 on the horizon, a new era of the franchise is about to unfold, and it looks to be the most ambitious entry in the beloved franchise yet. The Grand Theft Auto series is full of genre-defining moments that have shaped the video game landscape over the years, and it’s likely that GTA 6 will also be a trend-setter in this regard. However, the bar for overall impact on gaming as a whole is incredibly high, with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas laying the foundation for modern games as one of the most impactful games of all time.
When GTA: San Andreas released back in 2004, the franchise was already pretty well established. After moving on from the 2D era of GTA 1 and GTA 2, GTA 3 introduced the concept of a 3D open world for players to explore, accept missions, and treat like a sandbox for their imaginations. As the third entry in the 3D era of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, San Andreas elevated the map design and gameplay mechanics of its predecessors to create one of the most impressive and robust open world maps of its time, and it’s unlikely that GTA 6 has the means to truly match the influence that San Andreas would have for the open-world genre following its release.
Grand Theft Auto Fans Have One Big Concern When It Comes to GTA 6
The expectations surrounding GTA are continuing to grow, and one major concern is focused on the game’s environmental realism.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Set the Open World Map Standard Over 20 Years Ago
It’s hard to comprehend just how important of a game San Andreas was for pioneering the open world genre of the early 2000s when looking back on it today. Modern gaming is full of sprawling open worlds to the point where it has largely become the standard. But at the time when GTA: San Andreas was released, there were few examples to point to in comparison outside the previous entries in the franchise.
The other open world games that existed around the time of San Andreas‘s release really couldn’t compare to the sheer scale of its open world. A game like The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, which released in 2002, had an impressive map size at the time, but would have been more comparable to GTA: Vice City, which released that same year. Even open-world games like Shadow of the Colossus, Bully, or Fallout 3, which would release in the years after San Andreas, didn’t have nearly as impressive maps.
San Andreas’s Major Locations Segment the Game into Distinct Chapters
- Los Santos
- San Andreas Countryside
- San Fierro
- The Desert
- Las Venturas
Although the map size of San Andreas has been outdone by games released in the years since, its scale is hard to compete with. Not only does the game introduce Los Santos to the GTA franchise, but it brings with it two other full cities in the state of San Andreas, San Fierro and Las Venturas, as well as the areas in between, such as The Desert and the San Andreas Countryside. Combined, these locations make San Andreas feel larger than life, even if it’s technically smaller than many modern-day open world games.
Another factor that contributes to the scale of San Andreas is the way the game uses its major locations to break up story chapters. The feeling of exploring Los Santos in the first act only for CJ to end up out in the San Andreas Countryside really put the game’s scale into perspective. The same can be said about diving into the San Fierro arc and, eventually, the Las Venturas arc as well.
San Andreas Laid the Foundation for Future Rockstar Games to Follow
The novelty of San Andreas‘s massive, multi-city map has lost its luster somewhat, given the Rockstar games that have followed it. GTA 4 built upon this world design by separating Liberty City into distinct areas associated with each major act, despite all still being contained to one city. The Red Dead Redemption games also followed this trend, with Red Dead Redemption 2 being the latest Rockstart game to orient its story around specific regions like New Hanover, West Elizabeth, Ambarino, Lemoyne, and New Austin. However, it was San Andreas that pioneered this format, and there was nothing quite like it at the time of the game’s release.
Even if GTA 6’s Map is the Biggest in the Franchise, It May Not Hold a Candle to San Andreas
GTA 5 took players back to Los Santos for the first time since San Andreas, and while the city itself is much larger and more fleshed out, GTA 5 lacks access to San Fierro and Las Venturas like San Andreas had. The map of GTA 5 is bigger than San Andreas, nearly twice the size, in fact, but without San Fierro and Las Venturas, the scale doesn’t feel quite as impressive by comparison. Arguably, GTA 5 has the better version of Los Santos, too, but the world-building that San Andreas offered with its additional cities across the state of San Andreas is the best in the franchise bar none.
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This puts GTA 6 in a tough position when it comes to upping the ante of map scale. While GTA 6 is an ambitious game that is set to feature Vice City and parts of the surrounding state of Leonida, it’s not clear just how much of this state will be included in the game’s map. GTA 6‘s map might technically be the biggest in the entire franchise, potentially one of the biggest of any game to date, but it’s coming at a time when massive open worlds don’t have to be attached to huge franchises like Grand Theft Auto, as this year’s Crimson Desert has shown. As such, it’s unlikely that GTA 6‘s map will be its defining feature like GTA: San Andreas‘s was, and it’s unlikely any future GTA game’s map will have the same impact on the genre.
- Released
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October 26, 2004
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs
- Engine
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RenderWare
