[San Andreas Stories: Demo Launch]

For a highly anticipated fan mod, the trailers have done an amazing service on showing you a glimpse of the prequel title that Renderware simply wouldn’t allow.

...It’s just the ai voices. They’re awful. Better off having no dialogue at all. 

After years of GTA fan projects, you almost always know the closed captioning/script itself is usually below amateur to begin with.

“Toni Cipriani of the Leone Crime Family has betrayed me! But why?”

Besides the voices being unlistenable, the other big complaint I have is just how they’ve put the word out. Like, I don’t know if they’re just afraid of Take-Two Interactive or what the deal is. Because... the trailers still got views.

Not everyone is going to join their Discord to know exactly what’s going on. They’ve done update posts on their YouTube channel, but any actual details on production are slim to none. The most info you really could’ve received for this was on their website today with the download.

 

Nonetheless, what they’ve done to update the map and gameplay on Stories level is where the real meat is, and not a bad thing to be joyful about.

And, y’know, it could be much worse.

Other aspiring projects were taken down before they ever had any real chance of flying. But here we have a Demo mod that people can actually download and play for themselves.

Even if we never get a finalized version of San Andreas Stories, props to these guys for putting something playable out before we could even get the second trailer for GTA VI.


Visually, it all looks so very nice and something I wish I could’ve had on my busted PlayStation Portable.

With 13 missions (again, not a finalized project/be thankful/yaddayadda) there’s only bread crumbs you can latch onto for the plot.

At the same time, it’s a breath of fresh air compared to fans retelling the Green Sabre/how CJ fled to Liberty City verbatim yet again.


José is a good Stories title lead-in who fits the bill as he only appeared in the original San Andreas for less than a minute.

Aztecas being the gang you rep this time instead of Grove is also crucial. You get two different sides of later allied gangs and how they’d prepare themselves for the ultimate setting in just a few years.

 

Grove Street Families isn’t the main focus of this particular campaign, and yet I still feel unfortunately that what they teased here was undercooked.

Trailers showed a Boyz N The Hood - Ice Cube type model, so I think “OK, prequel Sweet.” And then it ends up not being Sweet. A character named Tyrone Irving who lives in Ganton and drives the same bucket car as Sweet/most GSF and that’s about all.

I watched over the gameplay and I don’t think Tyrone even mentions Grove Street once. He randomly has you do jobs that involve messing with Ballas and Vagos, but he doesn’t really say any of the shit that Sweet or any Families member would be saying.

If they make a final product... could be gearing for him to be the traitor that gets killed?

José had basic prejudice with Carl in the original game. Tyrone’s sorta charged on TBOGT levels with how he talks to José. 

If they were to flesh that out as they go along, that would put a better stamp on San Andreas’ in-game error with Aztecas being hostile on CJ.

 

Favorite mission they had was Turn of a Friendly Card. Ballas npcs look badass!