Related: How Grand Theft Auto 5's Franklin & San Andreas' CJ Are RelatedĮven more ambitiously, San Andreas features a role-playing system that allows players to level up different attributes and alter CJ’s appearance. The ability to craft your perfect lowrider or fly around in a jetpack isn’t present in earlier titles, so players who start with San Andreas will miss those features when they play through the rest of the trilogy. In addition to the multitude of options, San Andreas also offers deep customization options for vehicles, including paint jobs, nitrous oxide, hydraulics, and frame modifications. That's not to mention parachute and swimming gameplay. Whereas GTA 3 features mainly cars and trucks and Vice City adds boats, motorcycles, and planes, San Andreas incorporates many vehicles, such as planes, trains, and even jetpacks. There’s also the transportation of San Andreas, which is more varied and fully formed than in previous entries. The previous two games still have impressive maps, but they don't possess the depth of the environment in San Andreas. This means that if players moved onto the relatively constricted settings of GTA 3 and Vice City after playing through the sprawling San Andreas, they might be slightly underwhelmed. What’s even more impressive is the sheer amount of diversity included in the map, which includes desert fields, inner-city neighborhoods, and casino strips. San Andreas' map even competes with GTA 5's, which is a testament to the game's scale. While GTA 3 and Vice City take place in sandboxes that were seen as huge at their times of release, San Andreas contains three cities that players can explore: Los Santos (based on Las Angeles), San Fierro (based on San Francisco), and Las Venturas (based on Las Vegas). San Andreas's open-world is significantly larger than earlier Grand Theft Auto game maps, and it's loaded with things to do. San Andreas Feels So Much Bigger Than Vice City & GTA 3 While GTA 3 and Vice City are each classic entries, they almost feel quaint when compared to the sheer scope of San Andreas. It is the experience that the prior two games had been building towards, and it’s still talked about as one of the most ambitious games ever made.
This boils down more to gameplay than it does story, as San Andreas possessed the most in-game features of any GTA up to the point of its release. Still, San Andreas makes the most sense as the final game players should experience in the GTA Trilogy. Related: Are GTA Trilogy Remasters Why There's No GTA 6? Therefore, some players will choose to play GTA: The Trilogy in chronological order, enjoying the narrative in a linear fashion. While GTA 3 was the first of the trilogy to be released, the following two games were actually prequels. This means that Vice City, set in 1986, is the first game in the trilogy’s chronology, and San Andreas is the second.
GTA 5 BUILD STRENGTH AFTER FIRST LEVEL SERIES
The gameplay of the series evolved greatly in the few years between the releases of GTA 3 and San Andreas, but Vice City and San Andreas looked to the past when it came to their settings. GTA 3 was released in 2001, followed by Vice City in 2002 and San Andreas in 2004. While the three games included all exist in the same narrative continuity, they each feature their own independent main stories, and players will be able to decide which classic GTA game they want to play first. Thinking of the swathe of additions San Andreas introduced to the series, especially on such limited hardware, it’s little wonder it went on to become the best-selling game on the PS2.Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, which remasters Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas, is set to release on November 11, and players should make sure they save San Andreas until last. It certainly wasn’t the most graphically impressive game of its day, but the sheer scope of San Andreas was utterly mind blowing, not to mention the litany of side activities like customizing cars, buying new clothes for CJ, forming relationships with NPCs and even improving stats like stamina and strength at the gym. It featured a well-rounded, often hilarious cast of characters, a constantly surprising story, arguably the best open world of its time and one hell of a soundtrack provided through the game’s numerous radio stations. San Andreas is still iconic to this day for a number of reasons. Players took on the role of Carl Johnson, freshly returned to San Andreas from an extended stay in Liberty City, only to find the neighborhood he grew up in reduced to turmoil and gang violence. San Andreas was the series’ biggest technical leap forward of its time, featuring an enormous map connecting three major areas and no shortage of weird and wonderful desert locales to explore.