Which city is featured in GTA 5?

Rockstar Games is known for drawing design inspiration from real-life locations to GTA maps, and Grand Theft Auto 5, too, follows suit. The popular 2013 title features a fictional city called Los Santos, which is roughly based on real-life Los Angeles, California. Many fans of the franchise believe that both Los Angeles and Los Santos are the same locations. While this is technically true, there are several differentiating elements.

This article briefly discusses the city of Los Santos in GTA 5 and its differences from real-life Los Angeles.

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Interesting things to know about Los Santos from GTA 5

The City of Los Santos is the biggest fictional city in the State of San Andreas, also a fictional island in the United States of America. In Grand Theft Auto 5, Los Santos is home to people from different tiers of society. You can find rich neighborhoods like Rockford Hills, suburban areas like Strawberry, and industrial areas like El Burro Heights.

These locations generally resemble their real-life counterparts from Los Angeles. However, Rockstar Games scaled down the areas to fit the narrative. This process was applied to the entire map. As a result, Los Santos is significantly smaller than the actual area of Los Angeles.

To understand the scaling difference, you can refer to the following images taken from the Galileo Observatory and Griffith Observatory. The one on the left is an in-game screenshot, while that on the right is a real-life photograph.

View from the Galileo Observatory and Griffith Observatory (Images via GTA Wiki, Wikipedia)

You can see that the GTA 5 map created by Rockstar Games is much smaller than Los Angeles, although players won't notice the difference while engaged in the game.

One should also note that Los Santos isn't the only city featured in the game. The entire map is divided into two counties: Los Santos County and Blaine County. The bottom half of the map is called Los Santos County, while three-quarters of it is called the City of Los Santos.

Aside from that, the game features smaller towns such as Sandy Shores, Grapeseed, and Paleto Bay. The prologue of the popular GTA title also featured a new location called Ludendorff, a small town in the State of North Yankton.

These are the primary locations that were featured in Grand Theft Auto 5 Story Mode. However, the game's multiplayer version introduced another island map called Cayo Perico (also known as The Island or Paradise) in 2020.

It is the only map expansion that the game has received to date. However, if you do not have access to GTA Online, you cannot explore the location. That said, the community will be eagerly hoping Rockstar Games introduces map expansions in Grand Theft Auto 6 Story Mode.