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On 20th anniversary, GTA San Andreas veteran says open world was originally split into three maps: ‘Memory was very tight on PS2’

Online Niel October 26, 2024

Rockstar games released its seminal crime thriller Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas exactly two decades ago – October 26, 2004, another life – and a veteran developer decided to share a little information about the open-world game in celebration of its 20th – anniversaries.

The ever-talkative Obbe Vermeij, who has been the groundbreaking studio’s technical lead for years, recently jumped on social media to explain that the first draft of the San Andreas world plan was quite different.

“The original plan was for the three cities to be on separate maps,” Vermeij tweeted earlier, before noting that the first two GTAs were also structured the same way, albeit from an angle of up down. “The player would travel between cities using trains and planes.”

Vermeij explains that “memory was very tight on the PS2″, so splitting the map into three different sections meant that each city’s skyline models wouldn’t be demanding on the console’s already demanding memory. “It would also be easier to have different police/ambulance/fire cars for each city. Different pickups, types of weather, etc. It would also be easier to hold the player until it’s time for the next city. It would also make it easier. to organize the models on the DVD city by city, which would help with streaming.”

20 years ago we released Grand Theft Auto – San Andreas. The original plan was for the 3 cities to be on separate maps. The player travels between cities using trains and planes. (Gta 1 and 2 also had three cities on separate maps) Memory was very tight on ps2 and… pic.twitter.com/kUMxR9Kt96October 25, 2024

Just before the artists began work on the three maps, however, a last-minute meeting between Vermeij, producer Leslie Benzies, art director Aaron Garbut, technology director Adam Fowler, and programmer Alexander Roger scrapped that original plan. GTA San Andreas later shipped with all three cities seamlessly connected into one space, though the layers of fog make the game look bigger than it really is and probably served as a crutch for the poor old PS2.

For now, check everything we know about GTA 6.