Published on

On its 20th anniversary, GTA San Andreas veteran shares the open-world was originally split into three maps: 'Memory was very tight on the PS2'

A veteran developer reveals that the original plan for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was to have the three cities on separate maps, but due to PS2 memory limitations, they decided to connect them seamlessly, resulting in a larger feeling world.

Cover

Rockstar Games released its seminal crimathon Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas exactly two whole decades ago - October 26, 2004, another lifetime - and one veteran developer has decided to share a little known tidbit about the open-world game in celebrations of its 20th birthday.

The ever-chatty Obbe Vermeij, who was the ground-breaking studio's technical lead for years, recently jumped on social media to explain that the first draft plan for San Andreas' world was quite different. 

"The original plan was for the three cities to be on separate maps," Vermeij tweeted earlier today, before noting that the first two GTAs had also been structured in the same way, albeit from a top-down angle. "The player would travel between the cities using trains and planes."

Vermeij explains that "memory was very tight on the PS2," so splitting the map into three different sections meant each city's skyline models wouldn't have strained the console's already strained memory. "It would also make it easier to have different police/ambulance/firetrucks for each city. Different pickups, weather types etc. It would also be easier to contain the player until it was time for the next city. It would also make it easier to organize the models on the DVD city-by-city which would help the streaming."

20 years ago we released Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas.The original plan was for the 3 cities to be on separate maps. The player would travel between the cities using trains and planes.(Gta 1 and 2 also had three cities on separate maps)Memory was very tight on the ps2 and… pic.twitter.com/kUMxR9Kt96October 25, 2024

Right before the artists began work on the three maps, however, a last minute meeting between Vermeij, producer Leslie Benzies, art director Aaron Garbut, tech director Adam Fowler, and programmer Alexander Roger scrapped that original plan. GTA San Andreas later shipped with all three cities seamlessly connected in one space, though layers of fog make the game look bigger than it actually is and probably served as a crutch for the poor old PS2.

For now, check out everything we know about GTA 6.