GTA 6 vs GTA San Andreas: map, era and body stats

Is the GTA 6 map bigger than San Andreas?

Yes, by Rockstar’s account, though nobody has published a like-for-like figure. Aaron Garbut, Rockstar’s head of development, told Game Informer that Leonida is the biggest map the studio has ever made “by some degree”, and VGC reports that he put it at about twice the size of GTA 5’s.

San Andreas was huge for 2004. IGN’s review that year called it almost six times as big as Vice City, and Wikipedia gives about 36 square kilometers (14 square miles). By 2012, Game Informer was saying GTA 5’s Los Santos outgrew San Andreas, Red Dead Redemption and GTA IV put together, as long as you counted interiors, VideoGamer noted.

Rockstar hasn’t given Leonida an area, so square-mile figures you see online are estimates. We go through the official comparisons in how big the GTA 6 map is.

Does GTA 6 have three cities like San Andreas?

No, not from what Rockstar has shown. San Andreas gave you three cities: Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas, modeled on Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Countryside, forest and desert filled the space between them.

Leonida is built around one big city instead. Rockstar names six regions: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga National Park. In VGC’s write-up of Game Informer’s cover story, Vice City is the urban center, and the rest covers the Keys, an Everglades-style wetland, a faded tourist town, an industrial heartland and a national park on the northern edge.

That one-city approach goes back to GTA 5, which rebuilt Los Santos without San Fierro or Las Venturas. According to Wikipedia, Dan Houser felt that fitting in three cities had limited how well San Andreas could capture Los Angeles. Rockstar hasn’t said how much of Leonida each region covers.

When is each game set?

San Andreas is a period piece. The 2004 game takes place in 1992 in a state based on California and Nevada, and its story draws on Los Angeles history of the time, including the Bloods and Crips rivalry, the crack epidemic and the 1992 riots.

GTA 6 is set in the present day, though Rockstar hasn’t named a year. Its Vice City blurb says “We’re a long way from the ’80s”, and previews describe phone apps for banking, ride-hailing and social media.

How does CJ compare with Jason and Lucia?

The 2004 game had one lead, Carl “CJ” Johnson. After five years in Liberty City he came back to Los Santos when his mother was killed in a drive-by, and found his Grove Street gang had lost much of its turf.

GTA 6 has two. Rockstar’s profiles describe Jason as a former soldier raised around grifters, now working for drug runners in the Keys, and Lucia as someone whose fight for her family put her in the Leonida Penitentiary. Both have a Liberty City past: CJ lived there for years, and Rockstar mentions Lucia’s family’s “days in Liberty City”.

IGN’s preview says you can switch between them at any time while exploring, as in GTA 5, though the story can turn switching off at points. More on the leads in Jason and Lucia vs earlier GTA protagonists.

Can you get fat and go to the gym in GTA 6 like San Andreas?

Yes, going by the previews. In San Andreas, what CJ ate and how much he exercised changed his body and his abilities, gyms in each city taught a fighting style, and losing muscle made him weaker in a fight.

IGN reported after its visit to Rockstar North that weight and muscle are back as stats for the first time since San Andreas: the gym makes Jason and Lucia more muscular and stronger, overeating adds weight, and eating gives a big health boost. Rob Nelson of Rockstar North told YouTuber TGG you “have to actually eat quite a bit” before it shows, GamesRadar+ reported, and that muscle fades if you stop keeping it up.

VICE, citing TGG and the French outlet TroisCouleurs, adds that gyms are optional and need a membership, with cardio building stamina and strength work building health. Here’s how body changes work in GTA 6.

What don’t we know yet about GTA 6’s stats?

Quite a lot, so treat the details above as preview reports. Rockstar hasn’t said whether extra weight slows Jason or Lucia down or changes how much damage they can take.

San Andreas also tracked skills like driving, firearms, lung capacity and stamina, and raising them unlocked new abilities. The previews we’ve read don’t describe driving or shooting skills that grow with use in GTA 6. The closest reported match is swimming, where VICE says a lung-capacity meter takes the stamina bar’s place in the water.

Nelson told Famitsu, in GamesRadar+’s translation, that the team tried letting you buy groceries to restock the fridge, then simplified it to keep the mechanics manageable. Sleep is tracked by an in-game health app, he told TGG, with “some effect on regen of certain attributes”, but he didn’t say which.

Are San Andreas-style gang wars and dates in GTA 6?

Not in the 2004 form, as far as anyone knows. In San Andreas you could seize territory from rival gangs, then defend it from counterattacks, and date six different girlfriends.

Rockstar hasn’t announced territory wars or a way to recruit gang members in GTA 6. Gangs show up as part of the world, like the biker gang VGC says holds sway in Ambrosia. Romance centers on Jason and Lucia: IGN says it’s optional, and VICE reports that dates grow out of things you do together, such as the zoo, kayaking or the gym, instead of San Andreas’s fixed dating system.

Will GTA 6 be better than San Andreas?

Nobody can say until people play it. On length, HowLongToBeat players average about 30 hours for San Andreas’s main story, while Nelson told The New York Times his run through GTA 6’s story plus optional goals took 80 hours, Pure Xbox reported. That’s one developer’s playthrough, so yours could be shorter or much longer.

For us, San Andreas worked because one character could go almost anywhere in a huge state and keep changing along the way. We think GTA 6 is chasing that feeling with two leads and denser places. Our San Andreas page covers the 2004 game on its own.