I do seem to remember there being a good deal of hand-wringing about it prior to San Andreas' release - would it be a controversial choice? As it turns out, however risky it was for Rockstar Games to switch up the setting, it didn't matter at all to players.Īnd perhaps all of this would have stirred up some media controversy - were it not for the Hot Coffee sex minigame scandal, which dominated discussion of San Andreas. While it's true that no eyes were batted over C.J.'s ethnicity, I don't think it was a given. It wasn't a topic of conversation, it just was.' Ellis called San Andreas 'the first time that a AAA series chose a black protagonist and nobody batted an eye. Last year, we got into an interesting back-and-forth with blogger Jason Ellis, who penned a list of notable black main characters in videogames. Tommy Vercetti from Vice City is really kind of a jerk, he said, but C.J., avenging his mother's death, is driven by something more than criminal ambition.Īlso, I don't know if you noticed this, but he's black. When I mentioned this to 1up's Jeremy Parish as we were recording an upcoming Retronauts podcast about the series, he pointed out that one reason why San Andreas' story is stickier is that the main character, C.J., is more sympathetic.

The opening cinematics, especially a high-tension early scene in which several of the main characters argued in a cemetery, were absolutely riveting. But San Andreas kicked things into high gear. *Vice City *looked much more like a movie, if only an alright one. GTA III was firmly in the embryonic stage.

As I played through each successive installment of Grand Theft Auto, I'd been paying close attention to the development of the cinematic scenes.

Gta sa fun things to do