Quote:
"San Andreas is not a city - it’s a state. The game will take place in three cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and the countryside in between. Los Angeles will be called Los Santos, San Francisco will be called San Fierro, and Las Vegas will be called Las Venturra. Each city is relatively the same size as Vice City, and will be fully open to the player at different points in the story arc. The entire game is approximately four to six times as large as either GTA III or Vice City.
You will be able to travel between cities on roads that reach through a vast countryside, and the countryside has its own unique characters and gameplay sequences. Each city will have a much more diverse set of experiences for the player and will emphasize a different aspect of San Andreas’ gameplay. San Fierro has plenty of hills and thus is more focused on driving. Specialty vehicles can be unlocked to bring new fun to the environment of the cities.
The countryside will expand on the GTA experience where cities could not. For example, there will be a mountain that you can drive up. You will be able to drive from Los Santos through the countryside, up a mountain into San Fierro, and continue on to Las Venturra to give depth to the game and make it feel completely real.
Because of some new streaming and rendering that Rockstar designed themselves, San Andreas will feature environments that are both more intricate and more interactive than Vice City. Vice City had a bigger map than GTA III, but not everything was as dense and interesting as it could have been. In San Andreas, the entire map is crisper and has a lot more things going on. Even the desert will feel vibrant and alive.
The graphics engine has been overhauled and now has new techniques like radial lighting which gives more realistic shadowing. The engine also includes real-time reflections on cars, windows, and mirrors, and soft-shadow lighting for interior levels. Everything in the game now has independent models for day and nighttime, so the objects can look as detailed and vivid during night as they do during the day. San Andreas will feature "impact animation," or rag-doll physics.
San Andreas will push the limits on interiors. While Vice City introduced the idea of interiors, most of them were nothing but detailed save points. In SA however, tons of interiors have been fully rendered out and made more interactive, for example robbing houses.
Rockstar has pushed themselves to create a vast interactive world. San Andreas will have scores of unique interiors, dozens of restaurants, and a fully operational casino. While many of these would have been mere novelties in the past, they now directly affect your characters progression, abilities, and even appearance..."
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