October 28th 2024.
As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, one of the original developers of the PS2 game, Obbe Vermeij, has shared some new insights into its creation. Despite the game being thoroughly dissected over the years, Vermeij has revealed something that was never previously known – the truth about bigfoot.
Released in 2004, San Andreas was the last of the three PlayStation 2 era GTA games and remains one of the most beloved entries in the franchise. While the game is famous for its massive map featuring three cities, Vermeij revealed that the original plan was to have each city completely separate, accessible only by train or plane.
The inspiration for the three cities actually came from the maps of the original 2D Grand Theft Auto game from 1997 – Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City. In those days, the cities were entirely separate and could not be driven between. This was also the original concept for the 2004 version of San Andreas.
Vermeij explained that this decision was partly due to technical limitations, as separating the cities made it easier to organize the information on the disc, resulting in faster streaming of data. However, just before the artists started working on the maps, there was a final meeting where they changed their minds and decided to go for a bigger, united map.
Despite the tight time frame to create these games (only one year between GTA 3 and Vice City, and two years between Vice City and San Andreas), the team managed to fill the game with many intricate details that are still being discovered by fans to this day. From special lines for an overweight protagonist to paramedics trying to revive NPCs, the level of detail in San Andreas is impressive.
One popular thread on Twitter even pointed out a feature that many players had never noticed – the ability to ask recruited Grove Street Members to take a photo of CJ. The thread creator, Synth Potato, admitted to only discovering this feature recently, despite playing the game for years.
As for the long-standing rumor of bigfoot appearing in the game, Vermeij dispelled it by confirming that it was never actually included. He also mentioned that Vice City was his personal favorite of the three PS2 era games.
Vermeij also reminisced about the early 2000s gaming industry, where physical discs were still the norm and patches over the internet were not yet a thing. He shared his experience of witnessing the excitement and anticipation of fans lining up outside a store in Edinburgh for the midnight release of San Andreas.
Although Vermeij left Rockstar after working on DLC for GTA 4, he is still involved in the gaming industry and is currently working on a god game called Plentiful. As we continue to uncover hidden secrets in San Andreas, it's fascinating to look back and appreciate the incredible achievement of creating this game within such a tight timeframe.
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