The three cities of GTA San Andreas were located on almost completely separate maps

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One of the defining features of GTA: San Andreas is its huge (at the time!) map, which consists of three cities.
It almost wasn't, as a former Rockstar Games veteran revealed that they almost parted ways.
Despite the benefits of making the Los Santos, San Ferro, and Las Venturas maps, Rockstar decided to go for a large open world.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was originally going to have a separate map for each of its three cities, until Rockstar decided to go rogue and put Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas into one interconnected map. .

Since the PS2 days, the Grand Theft Auto games have been known for their massive open world maps. While Liberty City and Vice City were big for the time, things took things to a whole new level in San Andreas, featuring three entire cities on an interconnected map for CJ to explore—albeit when the police removed from his back.

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For as long as I've been a GTA fan, I've had fond memories of flying flying cars across the map over Los Santos, San Ferro, and Las Venturas. It almost wasn't, as a former Rockstar developer has confirmed that they were originally completely separate locations.

GTA: San Andreas split Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas across three maps roughly

Rockstar Games has always been very secretive about the development of their blockbuster games, but that's changed a bit over the past few years thanks to veteran developer Obbe Vermeij, who has been revealing a lot of behind-the-scenes details on Twitter. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of GTA: San Andreas, Vermeij shared some very interesting details about the game's map.

According to Vermeij, the three cities of San Andreas (Los Santos, San Ferro, and Las Venturas) were originally intended to be located on three separate maps that the player would travel between using trains and planes. This was because memory is very tight on the PS2, and Rockstar wanted to get around this by not displaying all three models at the same time while exploring the open world.

Having three different cities makes it easier to find unique ambulances, police cars and fire trucks, along with changing weather and pickups across the map. To add to that, it also keeps the player in one place at the same time, making model organization and streaming much easier.

The endgame keeps CJ in one location and gives him a Wanted level if he leaves the city he should be in at the time. It was always interesting to see people for the first time.

As you can probably tell, building separate cities had many obvious advantages, even if it meant removing a large open world. Vermeij revealed that Rockstar North had a final meeting with the game's artists before starting work on three separate maps, and as a team decided to go for one big map instead of three, with San Andreas as a stepping stone. Big established in this genre.