GTA: San Andreas Magazine Scans

By bolix
in Gamers' Hangout

 Share

Recommended Posts

Experienced

bolix

Posted
  • Author
Posted

That's all....

New Features

3 Different Cities :- Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas

The game names for the cities are :- Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturra

There will be countryside in between so you will have to travel to get to cities like GTA3

The cities are all 2-3x the size of vice city which begs me to ask "Will it fit on one disk?"

Smog effects

Real time reflections

Radial Lighting

Models have day and night versions to give better light and shadowing

"More Serious" Than other GTA's yet the satire still remains

Recruiting of gang members so you can have people join your "crew"

4 person drive by's

House Robberies - you can now burgle houses although "skill is required"

Eating - Another RPG element to the game, you eat too many fats and you get fat although gyms are supplied to get you fit (minigames anyone )

Ragdoll Physics have been implemented, watch a gang member fall down stairs realistically.

Dual weapons, carry around 2 pistols.

Proficient

scaredmogwai

Posted
Posted
  boli06 said:
Eating - Another RPG element to the game, you eat too many fats and you get fat although gyms are supplied to get you fit (minigames anyone )

Ragdoll Physics have been implemented, watch a gang member fall down stairs realistically.

Dual weapons, carry around 2 pistols.

:whistle: (Y)

Experienced

bolix

Posted
  • Author
Posted

This is from GTAGaming too, at http://www.gtagaming.com/sanandreas/gameinformer

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.

Purchasing buildings was just touched on in Vice City. Now, it has a much higher importance. In San Andreas the idea of building your criminal empire has been taken a lot further, for example in Las Venturra you can buy, build, and run your own casino. Every part of the San Andreas society will be precise - from the rich residents to the ones living in suburban areas to the maniacs in the countryside. San Andreas will push the envelope on feeling more like a living, breathing world than its predecessors were.

The game is not about gangbanging. There will be a rap station, but as always there will be a variety of other types of music. No details on the radio stations has been released.

Rockstar has implemented things the hardcore fans of GTA III and Vice City. San Andreas will have some characters from past games making reappearances or being mentioned. There will be plenty of fun things to catch if you followed the stories of the previous games.

The AI has been improved. NPCs now react to you more intelligently with their new "brains." For example, before you could kill someone in the middle of the street in broad daylight and have no one notice. This won?t be the case in San Andreas. NPC intelligence now has a need for hour long recording sessions, which was only ten minutes in Vice City. San Andreas will have plenty of well known and some excellent unknown voice acting talents.

With the new AI comes dynamic difficulty. This means based on your performance missions will be made to suit your skill level. This will allow more players to be able to play the game to the end. You will also be able to recruit gang members to aid you during missions, and one use for them is a four person drive-by. You can run your gang, but you won?t be checking on inventory or anything like that. You will run it in a way where you are kept in the story, through phone calls and speaking to people. In Vice City and GTA III you were either on a mission or you weren?t, and the story didn?t feel like it progress outside the missions. Well now the game changes all the time. While you aren?t on a mission, you can things that reflect your position in the storyline. You can take up side missions where you can learn a skill you need for a mission.

Money has a greater use than it did in Vice City. Outside missions you can rob homes to earn some cash. However, house robbing is nothing like carjacking. It will take a lot of skill and planning to pull it off.

As you progress in the story, you can open up new things to do outside missions, which are still tied into the story. In Las Venturra you can gamble your money in your casino. The way things unlock are more complex now. There are basic tutorials at the start of the game, and then on each mission you can learn a skill. So in every mission you will be doing something new, and the game will stay fresh and challenging throughout the story.

Your character also changes depending on what you do. There are plenty of restaurants around San Andreas and you have to eat to stay healthy and retain your stamina. If you eat fast food often and don?t go to the gym, your character becomes fat, and this changes the game. Pedestrians call you a fat ******, your running speed and strength are low, and your character?s physics change. Being fat makes missions more difficult or in some cases not possible. To fix being fat, you can go to gyms to work out. Working out gives you strength and more speed, and your character model looks fit. Rockstar wants to make you feel like you have complete control over the story and over your character, and this example of his weight is just the tip of the iceberg.

The targeting and camera systems are being overhauled. While no details have been released, Rockstar made references to features in Manhunt, and promises that the targeting will be really fun this time.

All new animations have been designed. Hand-to-hand combat will be more improved to include more variety in stances, attacks, and control over the fighting. There will be new styles of carjacking. Swimming is now included in the game. Rockstar has put in a lot of new weapons with more variety, and also focused on revamping old ones to feel more unique. Your character can dual wield pistols and possibly other weapons.

The vehicle physics engine is being changed to improve car handling and open up the possibility of new types of transportation. Vice City ranged from a moped to a plane, and the range in SA is much bigger at both ends this time. You can even ride a bicycle in San Andreas and you will have to press buttons to pedal it.

- All of this information was summarized from the June 2004 issue of Game Informer.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.