What GTA location is most faithful to its real-life counterpart?

[BennyGod]

What GTA location is most accurate compared to its real life version? 

[XNOR]

I'd say GTA IV's Liberty City followed by 3D-era San Andreas state.

[BennyGod]

On 8/11/2024 at 12:32 PM, XNOR said:

I'd say GTA IV's Liberty City followed by 3D-era San Andreas state.

Really? I'd say GTA V's San Andreas state is way more accurate to the IRL location.

[Pashaforever]

1.  GTA VI Vice City

2. GTA IV Liberty City

3.  GTA V Los Santos

[bethmurphy]

The most faithful GTA location to its real-life counterpart is Los Santos, inspired by Los Angeles. Its detailed depiction of LA’s landmarks, neighborhoods, and urban layout captures the essence of the real city remarkably well.

[universetwisters]

On 8/16/2024 at 9:00 AM, bethmurphy said:

The most faithful GTA location to its real-life counterpart is Los Santos, inspired by Los Angeles. Its detailed depiction of LA’s landmarks, neighborhoods, and urban layout captures the essence of the real city remarkably well.

I have to contest this. South Central is only a couple of blocks large. Despite being based on the movie capital of the world, there’s only one film studio. For being the city known for its freeway system and subsequent suburban sprawl, there’s only one real suburb (mirror park).

 

Also this post reeks of AI lol

 

 

OT - Star Junction in IV relative to Times Square, at least at the time before they made that one street pedestrian only 

Edited August 18 by universetwisters

[almightyvasi]

GTA V's Los Santos no doubt, though places such as Venice Beach & Pier and similar landmarks around LS are depicted almost to perfection, some parts of the city feel.. idk unfinished or something. I mean my real life neighborhood is literally bigger than the entire Davis (Compton) area, and it goes the same to the downtown part as well and some more areas not worth mentioning

[Beer Flood]

I'll have to agree with IV's Liberty City. They did a great job at scaling down NYC and Jersey City while still representing many of the landmarks and the atmosphere of the cities. Though I wish they did more to make Alderney feel like a separate state

 

I also have to give a callout to 2D Liberty City too, due to it being shaped more accurately to NYC than HD Liberty City and especially 3D Liberty City

Spoiler

 

HD San Andreas nails the atmosphere of LA and it's surrounding area, but drops the ball on almost everything else

[The Journey]

On 8/18/2024 at 9:55 AM, universetwisters said:

I have to contest this. South Central is only a couple of blocks large. Despite being based on the movie capital of the world, there’s only one film studio. For being the city known for its freeway system and subsequent suburban sprawl, there’s only one real suburb (mirror park).

 

Also this post reeks of AI lol

 

 

OT - Star Junction in IV relative to Times Square, at least at the time before they made that one street pedestrian only 

GTA IV is kind of the same with Broker, Dukes and Bohan. If you look at a size comparison of the V and IV maps, each of them are the same size as South Los Santos (excluding the airport for Dukes).

 

in GTA IV, Algonquin is like 3x the size of Broker. In real life it’s the other way around. I think it’s just for the map to be more interesting vs copy/pasting the same identical looking residential blocks.

 

But yea South LS would’ve been better if it was like double the size + Long Beach but I’m more pressed over how dirty they did the countryside in V.

Edited September 15 by The Journey

[mp412rex]

GTA 4 bc it didn't have pesky mountains that hogged up space (looking at u V)

 

 

If V had less mountains and more city it would've been perfect. Im not asking for LA noire kinds of city building but should've been bigger

[universetwisters]

5 hours ago, The Journey said:

GTA IV is kind of the same with Broker, Dukes and Bohan. If you look at a size comparison of the V and IV maps, each of them are the same size as South Los Santos (excluding the airport for Dukes).

 

in GTA IV, Algonquin is like 3x the size of Broker. In real life it’s the other way around. I think it’s just for the map to be more interesting vs copy/pasting the same identical looking residential blocks.

This is true, but at least with Broker/Dukes/Bohan, you can pretend that there’s more to whatever borough further afield that just aren’t depicted within the game. However, in V’s case, it’s harder to suspend your disbelief like that because there’s no bodies of water or barriers to pretend that there’s more outside, you just drive like three blocks in one direction and you’re already through the ghetto.

 

 

[cant remember]

What about which location they tried to have a reallife location and completely missed the mark ?

IMO the "average" nondescript areas of Broker/Dukes, barely really feel like you're dropped in random street in Brooklyn, the aesthetic/road texture is completely off the roads are much too wide, washed out and windy.

[The Journey]

14 hours ago, cant remember said:

What about which location they tried to have a reallife location and completely missed the mark ?

IMO the "average" nondescript areas of Broker/Dukes, barely really feel like you're dropped in random street in Brooklyn, the aesthetic/road texture is completely off the roads are much too wide, washed out and windy.

No Italian neighborhood in Broker either, I get that they wanted to focus the mafia story in Alderney but no Italian district in GTA’s Brooklyn is just not it.

Edited September 16 by The Journey

[DragonpokeZ]

I haven't been to NY to check how faithful the 3D/HD Universe renditions of Liberty City are, but HD Los Santos is very similar to the actual city of LA. Of course there's lots of neighborhoods missing but R* is now going to map out every little house and tree, even if they didn't have technical limitations that prevented them from doing so

[Role-Play Walkthrough]

On 9/14/2024 at 11:23 PM, mp412rex said:

GTA 4 bc it didn't have pesky mountains that hogged up space (looking at u V)

 

 

If V had less mountains and more city it would've been perfect. Im not asking for LA noire kinds of city building but should've been bigger

Yeah I would have so much rather had a smaller map that was just urban city LS, if it would have meant keeping the advanced AI behavior and physics and everything from IV

[BennyGod]

On 9/15/2024 at 3:23 AM, universetwisters said:

This is true, but at least with Broker/Dukes/Bohan, you can pretend that there’s more to whatever borough further afield that just aren’t depicted within the game. However, in V’s case, it’s harder to suspend your disbelief like that because there’s no bodies of water or barriers to pretend that there’s more outside, you just drive like three blocks in one direction and you’re already through the ghetto.

 

 

To be fair, real life ghettos can be right next to decent parts of cities. Often, the division is very sudden and apparent. The size though is unimpressive. 

[universetwisters]

1 hour ago, BennyGod said:

To be fair, real life ghettos can be right next to decent parts of cities. Often, the division is very sudden and apparent. The size though is unimpressive. 

Yeah I don’t doubt that since I live in cities like that. One neighborhood north of the main road is very nice and middle class while the neighborhood south of the main road is just a ghetto slum.
 

My issue isn’t you drive three blocks in any direction and you’re out of the ghetto, my issue is you drive three blocks ACROSS the ghetto, front to end. Yeah some smaller cities have ghettos like that which is fair, but this isn’t a smaller city being depicted, it’s south central LA. I’m not at a computer right now but I’m willing to bet money that Rockford hills is significantly larger than the ghetto, which sucks especially because like 1/5 of the game takes place in the ghetto (or is centric to that part) while we don’t do much in Rockford hills other than get a mansion there

 

E. I’m stupid I don’t mean Rockford hills, I mean whatever the neighborhood Franklin moves into is called 

Edited September 17 by universetwisters

[Bruhology_978]

As someone who actually does live in Los Angeles (Los Santos irl) I personally would say that Los Santos is pretty faithful to the real life L.A.

 

But there are some stuff that kinda make me question what Rockstar where thinking like cutting off half of the South Central area from the game. Like yeah we do have Compton in the game, Watts, and Crenshaw but it's literally just pieces of it all mixed up in the game. I know that the game came out on the PS3 and the XBOX 360 way back then (I was 8 at the time) but like they could've at least have more of the city then the country side cause in my personal opinion. The entire desert area is kinda boring and doesn't serve that much purpose.

 

Like there could've been more potential for the city to be a lot bigger than it already is, like even Midnight Club L.A. has some good amount of the city that didn't make it in GTA 5.

There's a lot more I could get into like the freeways or the Metro System and all that but that's mostly what I got to say

plus it would've been cool taking Trevor to a much bigger version of South LS in the game and cause havoc lmao

[.Ryan.]

HD Liberty City and Los Santos are kind of obvious picks since they’re way closer to the real life cities they’re based on than anything from the 3D era.

 

In saying that I have to give GTA 1’s Liberty City a special mention. It might not seem like it because it’s top down and it’s hard to distinguish well anything, but when you look at the map itself it’s quite accurate to how NYC looks.

 

Albeit it’s no where near to scale obviously, but for 1997 I can’t think of anything else like it.

[HOW'S ANNIE?]

HD Liberty City is probably the most faithful, taking into consideration the period in which it's set. 2008 New York is a radically different place to what 2024 New York is. I think Rockstar struck at the last possible moment to paint LC/NY as the grimly hell hole it once was. It is all too clean and sterile now. 

[universetwisters]

On 9/24/2024 at 8:11 AM, HOW'S ANNIE? said:

I think Rockstar struck at the last possible moment to paint LC/NY as the grimly hell hole it once was. It is all too clean and sterile now. 

You say this like the Bronx and Brooklyn aren’t parts of NYC

[BennyGod]

On 9/26/2024 at 12:46 PM, universetwisters said:

You say this like the Bronx and Brooklyn aren’t parts of NYC

Brooklyn is really divided between being nice and being terrible. The Bronx is worse overall, and so is Queens.

[LowTierDude]

On 9/24/2024 at 8:11 PM, HOW'S ANNIE? said:

HD Liberty City is probably the most faithful, taking into consideration the period in which it's set. 2008 New York is a radically different place to what 2024 New York is. I think Rockstar struck at the last possible moment to paint LC/NY as the grimly hell hole it once was. It is all too clean and sterile now. 

Yeah you could def tell this when youre playing spiderman, it's interesting to see the contrast between the 2 new yorks

[jazzbone]

The Venice beach area in GTAV. From photos and movies R☆ did well with recreating the beach, pier, boardwalk, shops and nearby neighborhood.

 

Times square in GTAIV, especially with a line of yellow taxi cabs, only lacks needing more npc's walking about. Hailing a cab and telling the driver to hurry is cool.

[notactive]

I mean …

 

The map may not be topographically accurate … but parts of Los Santos are literally inseparable from the real-life Los Angeles, at least at first glance. It’s by far the most realistic.