A 20-year-old secret has finally been revealed

While waiting for GTA 6 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, a former Rockstar Games employee reveals behind the scenes of the cult Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. A competitive game that could have been different.

Given the rumors of a postponement of GTA 6, Take-Two Interactive was forced to comment. No, at the time of writing there are no signs of Grand Theft Auto VI being delayed. One of the most anticipated games of 2025 is still scheduled for Fall 2025 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. To pass the time until release, you can (re)discover three old PS2 games in their remastered versions. The GTA Trilogy The Definitive Edition compilation is still available on consoles and PC.

Different maps for GTA San Andreas

GTA San Andreas is 20 years old! Yes, twenty years have passed since the release of one of the best Grand Theft Auto games of all time. A work that has left its mark with its advances, such as the possibility of making the character gain or lose weight, or its vast terrain that recreates Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and its desert.

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of GTA San Andreas, Obbe Vermeij, former technical director at Rockstar Games until 2009, agreed to reveal an old manufacturing secret of this cult game. « Originally, the game’s three cities were supposed to be on separate maps. To travel between cities, players could use trains or planes

. (GTA 1 and 2 also had three cities on separate maps). Memory was very limited on the PS2, and with separate maps the city skyline models would not have needed to be stored in memory

» he explains.

A necessary adaptation to the PS2 and its memory

As always, teams had to deal with the hosting platform, and GTA San Andreas could have been even more different. « But it would also be easier to have different police, ambulance and fire vehicles in each city. Different pickups, different weather conditions, etc. This would also have made it easier to stall the player until they moved on to the next town. Finally, it would have been easier to organize the models on the DVD city by city, which would have been helpful for streaming ».

Why not implement this idea for GTA San Andreas? The studio simply changed its mind over time. « We had one final meeting at Rockstar North just before the artists began work on the three maps. We changed our minds and decided on a large map. In the end we still included the weather, certain vans and police cars » he concluded.

Source: Obbe Vermeij.