Elaine Wolf takes a look at Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and notes that in between it's violent edges, there's a history lesson taking place:
Last night I dreamt I went to Compton again.
I cruised the streets of South Los Angeles while the orange glow of the ocean-fed sunset lit up the Watts Towers and delayed the plans of graff writers. Everything was different, and yet nothing had changed. Sweet was rolling die with Big Smoke at the old playground, but my brother was strategically MIA, weakening the Grove Hill Families through incompetence and inaction. The cops were running our neighborhood like their own corner store, taking what they wanted, and always on credit.
But the Los Angeles I dreamed of was no more real than the estate Manderley in Rebecca, the novel from which I cribbed the opening line of this article. My Compton was a fictionalized neighborhood in an animated version of Los Angeles called Los Santos, one of three cities in San Andreas, the most thoroughly realized virtual world yet in the tremendously popular Grand Theft Auto video-game series developed by Rockstar Games and Rockstar North.
-- Grand Theft history [zwire.com]I cruised the streets of South Los Angeles while the orange glow of the ocean-fed sunset lit up the Watts Towers and delayed the plans of graff writers. Everything was different, and yet nothing had changed. Sweet was rolling die with Big Smoke at the old playground, but my brother was strategically MIA, weakening the Grove Hill Families through incompetence and inaction. The cops were running our neighborhood like their own corner store, taking what they wanted, and always on credit.
But the Los Angeles I dreamed of was no more real than the estate Manderley in Rebecca, the novel from which I cribbed the opening line of this article. My Compton was a fictionalized neighborhood in an animated version of Los Angeles called Los Santos, one of three cities in San Andreas, the most thoroughly realized virtual world yet in the tremendously popular Grand Theft Auto video-game series developed by Rockstar Games and Rockstar North.
An excellent read and a refreshing take on the title other than "you can beat a hooker". Wolf takes to task the fact that kids are being raised by video games and that their perspectives on history and culture do matter.
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