Questions re: California in GTA:W

[Garras Up]

See, while not keeping California as an existing in character state, you also leave certain aspects of confusion among people. How do two identical cities, with almost identical street gangs and almost identical law enforcement agencies exist, when California is never mentioned on the IG radio and this is what GTA Wiki states.

 

It was confirmed through Rockstar that the present area the player can explore in GTA V is not the whole state of San Andreas, but just the southern island portion of it. This might explain the lack of a designated state capital. It is likely that the GTA equivalent of the areas south of Los Angeles, including San Diego, exist and are simply not depicted for gameplay purposes.

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Judging by the overall terrain along the coast of San Andreas, it would be assumed that the northeast coast (specifically around Mount Gordo) would have consisted of mostly desert and eventually Las Venturas (had water not been used as a free-roam natural barrier). Part of this theory is supported by how the west coast consists almost entirely of natural beaches; whereas the east coast consists entirely of ridges and rock formations. To further back this theory, it is possible that the east coast would also serve as part of a river as the wreckage of a river steamboat can be found in the southeast section of the state as well as Lester mentioning in The Paleto Score that the body of water north of Paleto Bay is actually a river. The presence of Cape Catfish on the eastern coast of San Andreas, as well as islands and coves would not make sense if the east coast is supposed to be desert. The area south of the Palomino Highlands would most likely not be water as depicted, but would instead be the rest of Southern San Andreas, including the GTA equivalent of San Diego.

 

https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/State_of_San_Andreas_(HD_Universe)

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Along with the overwhelming presence of Surenos, Crips & Bloods, along with the Mexican Mafia & Skinhead gangs. We're basically a replacement of Cali anyway.

 

From what I see, lore-wise, there's other cities and states nearby, other than just LS. I'm sure if GTA 5 was created after Red Dead 2, we'd have a much larger landmass for San Andreas, if not surrounding areas too. We're currently roleplaying in the 'playable' area of the state and in my opinion, California's existence should be replaced by San Andreas, with relevant parts of LA lore being used by us, such as the 1992 riot, which is roleplayed ingame as having taken place in Little Seoul.

 

How exactly would the existing gangs (MS-13, eme, crip, bloods) justify the fact that San Andreas is the 51st state and that there's another state called San Andreas with the exact same group, who started in the exact same way? If you can successfully answer this question with something sensible, you may change my mind on the situation, but at the moment my mind is set towards simply ignoring San Andreas' existance and the fact that the city is basically empty.

 

In reality, parts of town like Little Seoul would be bustling, you'd barely recognize the same person twice, it's the same with many LA neighbourhoods.

Edited July 4, 2020 by El Ghetto Man

[Engelbert]

2 hours ago, Ink said:

I did some searching on the forums and saw this was brought up before in other threads, but I didn't find any clear answers on the matter.

We know that California laws do not have automatic bearing in San Andreas. We know San Andreas is a state in the USA. We know we use GTA lore as much as possible (car brands, Liberty City, Vice City, etc) That's all we have right now in terms of official lore.

Here are some questions I have which come up in RP every now and then. While none of these are super duper important it seems every person just kind of picks an answer they like at the moment, and I've seen this create multiple IC arguments which are amusing but not really immersive. 
 

1. Is San Andreas a 51st state, or does it replace California?
2. Is San Andreas actually an island as it is portrayed in the game or is it connected to mainland USA? Is there "more" of San Andreas that we're not seeing in our GTA V map?
3. If California exists, does it also have its own Los Angeles or is there a San Andreas sized hole missing in California approximately where Los Angeles would be?
4. Does San Fierro exist in San Andreas even though it's not in our game world, and if so is it part of the island or some unseen landmass in San Andreas? Or is it part of California?
5. For that matter, is Las Venturas still part of San Andreas, or is it in Nevada?
6. Do we roleplay San Andreas, officially, as being larger than it is in-game close to "reality," or are we supposed to RP its size as being consistent with the in-game world? In real life, it takes about an hour and a half to drive from downtown Los Angeles to Bakersfield (Grapeseed) without traffic. In our game world it can take about 2-3 minutes. Is there a happy middle ground we're encouraged to RP where maybe ICly it takes closer to 30 minutes to an hour to get to the edge of the island? 
7. Is Los Santos roleplayed as having a real life population closer to Los Angeles irl, or close to our player count? Are we assuming we live in a city with a massive population, or are we living in a busy smaller city? IRL Los Angeles is composed of like 20+ cities and has a population of close to 4 million people. Our game server has, what, 60,000 registered characters iirc? That's already an impressive population, but it doesn't account for any NPCs like our highschool systems, sewer systems, electrical companies, hospital staff, etc.

 

 

San Andreas IS California and Nevada, based on both.

No it is not an island of course.

Los Santos is LA, there is big difference even between old LS and new one. Cause city parts were named differently.

San Fierro indeed exists in San Andreas along with Las Venturas and plenty of small towns, it's just that GTAV map is small compared to GTA SA. There's also Tierra Robada and Bone County, just not in GTAV.

Yes we do.

Normally you'd have millions of people, like in GTAO.

 

XD

Edited July 4, 2020 by Engelbert

[MasterChief]

This entire thread is the reason why we need some sort of official Continuity Management from the GTAW staff to prevent this confusion and keep everyone on the same page. I know they've spoken about this before but its been a while since we've heard anything about it. 

 

@Nervous @Notbond @Keane

Edited July 4, 2020 by Chief

[Engelbert]

1 minute ago, Chief said:

This entire thread is the reason why we need some sort of official Continuity Management from the GTAW staff to prevent this confusion and keep everyone on the same page.

 

@Nervous @Notbond @Keane

They said there will be one day.

[my_g]

There's probably always gonna be some inconsistencies with the way people see things but I don't think it really has that much of a negative impact on the server, although it'd be nice to have some things officially cleared up. I'll answer how I personally view things though.

1 hour ago, Engelbert said:

Is San Andreas a 51st state, or does it replace California?

Replaces California

 

1 hour ago, Engelbert said:

Is San Andreas actually an island as it is portrayed in the game or is it connected to mainland USA? Is there "more" of San Andreas that we're not seeing in our GTA V map?

I roleplay it as it appears ingame, so an island.

1 hour ago, Engelbert said:

Does San Fierro exist in San Andreas even though it's not in our game world, and if so is it part of the island or some unseen landmass in San Andreas? Or is it part of California?

I imagine that the other parts of San andreas would be located off the map on mainland USA.

1 hour ago, Engelbert said:

For that matter, is Las Venturas still part of San Andreas, or is it in Nevada?

There is where I feel like there is a big divide as officially places like Las Venturas and fictional San Francisco are not included in the GTA HD universe which is a separate lore. There definitely needs to be some clarification on this.

1 hour ago, Engelbert said:

Do we roleplay San Andreas, officially, as being larger than it is in-game close to "reality," or are we supposed to RP its size as being consistent with the in-game world? In real life, it takes about an hour and a half to drive from downtown Los Angeles to Bakersfield (Grapeseed) without traffic. In our game world it can take about 2-3 minutes. Is there a happy middle ground we're encouraged to RP where maybe ICly it takes closer to 30 minutes to an hour to get to the edge of the island? 

I'm heavily against the notion that we should roleplay the map being bigger than it is, but there's already been a discussion on this and it seems that this is never gonna be a fully enforced mindset people should have.

1 hour ago, Engelbert said:

Is Los Santos roleplayed as having a real life population closer to Los Angeles irl, or close to our player count? Are we assuming we live in a city with a massive population, or are we living in a busy smaller city? IRL Los Angeles is composed of like 20+ cities and has a population of close to 4 million people. Our game server has, what, 60,000 registered characters iirc? That's already an impressive population, but it doesn't account for any NPCs like our highschool systems, sewer systems, electrical companies, hospital staff, etc.

Imo the population should reflect upon the size of the map and the residential capacity within it, definitely not 4million but maybe a little higher than it already is. But I don't think it's important either way.

[Invictus]

It's a fictional reality. Fictional reality usually replaces the real world with a simulation that is represented by fictional characters, cities, locations etc. Rockstar's intention is not to have both LA, Calli and LS, SA in the same universe but rather to create a fictional world meant to replace those just like Liberty City replaces New York/Chicago and Vice City replaces Miami City. In other words Rockstar's universe is meant to replace the real parts of the world and the immersion doesn't hurt anyone, in fact, it's pretty big. If this wasn't the case they could've done the same thing Ubisoft did with The Crew and kept the real names instead of creating a whole different universe.

 

Recently I watched True Detective season 2 and the action is happening in a fictional location from Callifornia, somewhere near Los Angeles, called Vinci City. Does that mean it exists irl? Of course not. Is the city supposed to replace an irl city? Yes, it replaces the corrupt town of Vernon. Does that mean both VInci and Vernon exist in the same universe? Nope. That's the whole point of having an unique lore and immersion. Roleplaying both LS and LA as being in the same universe doesn't make sense. The word based on means that /something/ is based on /something/ from the real world but it's also meant to replace that /something/.

 

That's my POV on the issue.

 

Edited July 4, 2020 by Invictus

[marbella mondays]

Management should honestly just put their foot down and say whether SA is replacing CA or it's its own entity. 

[Dom.]

According to the in-game lore, some in-game artwork, and character's explanations, San Andreas is a larger state than we see in game and is landlocked to one side. Paleto Bay sits on the coast of a large river (as shown by the artwork of a sign in game and Lester calling it a river during the storyline). The entirety of the game map is just "Southern San Andreas", evidenced by the fact that Trevor mentions that they've "gone around half the state" in Pack Man and mentions the playable area as "Southern San Andreas" during I Fought the Law...

I also assume that the east side of the playable map continues on as landmass, or at the very least a river since the west side is natural beaches and the east side is jagged rock formations. There's also a steamboat wreck somewhere in the water along the southeast coast of the map, close to Palomino Highlands.

 

San Andreas isn't an island, it's the GTA Universe's replacement for California. The weary mentions of California here and there are mistakes. Nobody's perfect and mishaps slip through.

 

Even though it isn't canon, this is always the map I used as a reference. This is just for part of the State of San Andreas, obviously. The north and the east continue on as landmass.

 

Edited July 5, 2020 by Dom.

[Momo's Revenge]

On 7/5/2020 at 12:30 AM, Dom. said:

According to the in-game lore, some in-game artwork, and character's explanations, San Andreas is a larger state than we see in game and is landlocked to one side. Paleto Bay sits on the coast of a large river (as shown by the artwork of a sign in game and Lester calling it a river during the storyline). The entirety of the game map is just "Southern San Andreas", evidenced by the fact that Trevor mentions that they've "gone around half the state" in Pack Man and mentions the playable area as "Southern San Andreas" during I Fought the Law...

I also assume that the east side of the playable map continues on as landmass, or at the very least a river since the west side is natural beaches and the east side is jagged rock formations. There's also a steamboat wreck somewhere in the water along the southeast coast of the map, close to Palomino Highlands.

 

San Andreas isn't an island, it's the GTA Universe's replacement for California. The weary mentions of California here and there are mistakes. Nobody's perfect and mishaps slip through.

 

Even though it isn't canon, this is always the map I used as a reference. This is just for part of the State of San Andreas, obviously. The north and the east continue on as landmass.

 

Imagine if this could be modded in. 

[Chef]

There's supposed to be a whole staff team dedicated to establishing and maintaining continuity, which this falls right in line with. 

 

Personally, I will always use the Rockstar equivalents that exist. As said earlier, why would there be two cities that are near a 1:1 of eachother? Makes zero sense.

 

It's basically been confirmed as well that Red Dead is the same universe, so those states can replace certain Southern States as well such as Texas, Louisiana, etc.