Five years ago Carl Johnson escaped from the pressures of life in Los Santos, San Andreas - a city tearing itself apart with gang trouble, drugs, and corruption. Where film stars and millionaires do their best to avoid the dealers and gangbangers. Now, it's the early 1990s. Carl's got to go home. His mother has been murdered, his family has fallen apart and his childhood friends are all heading toward disaster. On his return to the neighbourhood, a couple of corrupt cops frame him for homicide. CJ is forced on a journey that takes him across the entire state of San Andreas, to save his family and to take control of the streets.
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Wu Zi Mu, better known as Woozie, leads the San Fierro Triads despite being completely blind, something he reveals to CJ partway through their partnership. Somehow he still races cars competitively and wins, which the game treats as just another one of his many talents rather than explaining away.
Despite being listed as a side activity, the Flying School at Verdant Meadows is mandatory for progressing the main story once CJ buys the airstrip from Mike Toreno. Passing all ten lessons also earns a pilot's license needed to access the game's airports.
Grinding out full completion in San Andreas rewards players with a million dollars, infinite ammo without needing cheats, and a military jet called the Hydra that spawns on the roof of Sweet's house in Grove Street. It's widely considered one of the most demanding completion requirements of the 3D-era games, often taking dozens of hours beyond the main story.
San Andreas launched on PS2 in October 2004, but Take-Two's own earnings report was the first place that confirmed PC and Xbox owners wouldn't get their version until mid-2005. It eventually arrived that June, following the same console-first pattern the previous two games had used.
Beyond Officer Tenpenny's resemblance to a real corrupt LAPD officer, San Andreas pulls several of its bigger story beats straight from early-90s Los Angeles history, including the LA riots and the crack epidemic that shaped Grove Street's world. It's part of why the game still gets referenced as one of the more historically grounded entries in the series.
