Rockstar has just released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 5, and wouldn’t you know it, the setting just happens to be a fictional version of my home state of California (known as “San Andreas”).
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This made me rather excited. Finally, a location in a game that I can really relate to! Still, something odd struck me when I watched the trailer's depiction of the sunny atmosphere of California San Andreas and its major cities.
Are we really that dirty and poor?
Now, I know that Liberty City had its issues and Vice City was not something to brag about, but neither of them seemed quite on par with how the trailer depicted life in San Andreas. The poor flooded the streets, there was construction everywhere, and then there was the trash. In almost any shot where you see a sidewalk or street there was trash. Even the beaches had trash!
I have lived in California my entire life and yeah, I understand that it's kind of dirty. Lots of places have these issues. I just find it funny that Rockstar decided to wait for this game to finally show off their garbage-rendering skills. It’s as if someone said during the making of the last game, "Hey let's make the setting a parody of California!" and someone replied, "No way bro, we don't have the graphical technology to show how fucking dirty that state is!"
Granted, the people developing this game probably have no prejudice against my Golden State. It just feels weird that of all the locations they could’ve used when they decided to focus on these types of details, they chose mine.
The images in the trailer could have been taken out of context, of course. Maybe the game's story involves people dealing with these problems. Economic issues have plagued the real California ever since the great Terminator spent a bunch of money that he didn’t have. Maybe that has something to do with the developers’s view of the state? I guess we'll find out once GTA5 is released.
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For now, I just have to sit back and let people outside of California think we are the most dirty, poor, and ugly state to ever grace the GTA series.