>>19219497
San Andreas was fucking unbelievable at the time for the sheer scale of it and the fact that it was also fun on top of that. There were entertaining characters, funny cutscenes, a good variety of missions, all kinds of bonus shit you can do and an entire world you can explore.
Like that rail yard in San Andreas with the body armor, sawed off and AK-47 spawn. In basically any other game that whole area would either not exist or only exist as something you see over an unpassable fence or something. Multiply this example by a hundred and you get why people flipped over it so hard. It was legitimately revolutionary for it's time.
Also zero loading screens on the main world. You drive in a loop around the entire game world and it would never interrupt you. Seeing that on the PS2 was a real jaw dropper