San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an open-world action game developed by Rockstar North. It came out for the PlayStation 2 on 26 October 2004 and went on to become the best-selling game on that console, with 17.33 million units. It is the fifth main game in the series and the seventh entry overall, and it follows Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002).

Story

The game is set in 1992. Five years after leaving Los Santos, Carl "CJ" Johnson comes back from Liberty City after his mother's murder. He finds his family and old friends falling apart, and corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ sets about rebuilding his gang, the Grove Street Families.

CJ is voiced by the rapper Young Maylay in his first acting role. Rockstar wanted a relatively unknown actor for the lead. Opposite him, Samuel L. Jackson plays the main antagonist, the corrupt CRASH officer Frank Tenpenny. The cast also includes James Woods, Peter Fonda, Ice-T and David Cross.

The story draws on real events in Los Angeles: the Bloods and Crips rivalry, the crack epidemic, the 1992 riots and the LAPD Rampart scandal. Three Los Angeles natives, DJ Pooh, Estevan Oriol and Mister Cartoon, helped Rockstar capture the city's early 1990s street culture. DJ Pooh also co-wrote the game with Dan Houser and James Worrall.

Setting

The fictional state of San Andreas is based on California and Nevada. It has three cities: Los Santos (Los Angeles), San Fierro (San Francisco) and Las Venturas (Las Vegas). Countryside, forests, mountains and desert lie between them. Mountains, forests and a desert were firsts for the series. The map was about four to six times larger than those of Grand Theft Auto III and Vice City.

Gameplay

San Andreas added role-playing elements to the series. CJ's weight and muscle change depending on how he eats and exercises. Skills such as driving, shooting, stamina and lung capacity improve with use.

Players can customise CJ's clothes, hairstyle and tattoos. They can fight rival gangs for territory and choose from more than 180 vehicles, many of which can be modified at garages. A multiplayer mode lets two players roam the world together.

Development and music

Development took about two years. The Rockstar North team grew from 50 to 75 people, and producer Leslie Benzies hoped the game would redefine the series. The budget was under US$10 million.

The game runs on the RenderWare engine. A rewritten render pipeline allowed more detail and let players cross the whole state without loading screens between areas.

It has over 60,000 lines of dialogue. Its 861 credited actors earned a Guinness World Record for the largest video game voice cast. The radio has eleven stations, with DJs including Axl Rose, Chuck D and George Clinton. The PC, Xbox and mobile versions add a station for the player's own music. Michael Hunter wrote the main theme. Interscope Records partnered with Rockstar on the soundtrack and released a two-disc album and an eight-disc box set in 2004.

Reception

The PS2 version holds a Metascore of 95, which Metacritic classes as universal acclaim. Critics praised the story, the characters and the open world. Some critics and scholars criticised the game's portrayal of race.

San Andreas sold 4.5 million copies in its first week and was the best-selling game of 2004. By September 2011 it had sold 27.5 million copies across all platforms. At the 2004 Spike Video Game Awards it won Game of the Year and Best Action Game. Samuel L. Jackson won Best Performance by a Human Male. It also took Ultimate Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards.

Hot Coffee

After the Windows version came out, a mod called "Hot Coffee" unlocked sexual content that had been left hidden in the game's code. The ESRB re-rated the game Adults Only, and it was briefly banned in Australia until the content was removed.

The Federal Trade Commission warned Rockstar and Take-Two, a class action lawsuit followed, and the ESRB introduced fines of up to US$1 million for undisclosed content.

Later releases

The PS2 release slipped from the planned 19 and 22 October dates: North America got the game on 26 October 2004 and PAL regions on 29 October. Windows and Xbox versions followed on 7 June 2005 in North America and 10 June in Europe. They had higher resolution, longer draw distance and more detailed textures.

War Drum Studios' mobile port launched on iOS on 12 December 2013, then reached Android, Windows Phone and Fire OS. An enhanced Xbox 360 version arrived for the tenth anniversary on 26 October 2014. The PS4 got the game on 5 December 2015.

A remaster is part of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, The Definitive Edition. It was released on 11 November 2021 for Switch, PS4, PS5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. Android and iOS followed on 14 December 2023. A virtual reality version for Meta Quest 2 was announced in October 2021. In August 2024 Meta said it was on hold indefinitely.

Legacy

San Andreas concluded a loosely connected trilogy of the 3D era. The three games are set in the 1980s (Vice City), the 1990s (San Andreas) and the early 2000s (Grand Theft Auto III).

Lines such as "Ah shit, here we go again" and Big Smoke's "All we had to do was follow the damn train, CJ!" became lasting internet memes. Grand Theft Auto V (2013) went back to Los Santos but left out San Fierro and Las Venturas, so the team could recreate Los Angeles in more depth. San Andreas is widely considered one of the most significant games of the sixth console generation and one of the best video games ever made.