By now the OPS2M magazine has hit Germany with its own preview of the upcoming title, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. But still, much of the community is still in the dark as far as what the actual article revealed. We can attribute that to many things -- namely that most American, English, and Aussie fans don't understand Germanic blabber, but that's where -Nemo- from our very own network message boards has stepped in and provided a translation of the article.

"The number of licensed music tracks in San Andreas will have tripled -- and the game isn't even at full completion yet..."

-OPS2M Germany Translation

Like our most recent coverage of what IGN had to offer, OPM2 doesn't have much to say about San Andreas that we don't already know -- and what we do know, unsurprisingly, they try their best to dress up and sound new. For instance, they mentioned that some missions will take place in the hills and valleys of countryside or on the desert plains of Las Venturra's outskirts. The idea that actual story missions would at times take place in these geographical areas has never been literally said, but it's nothing truly new is it?

But onto what is. The AI of the NPCs is confirmed to have improved, it's been said that each and every ped on screen has his own intelligent brain. While the idea of neurological capabilities is a bit on the exaggerative side, there are some impressive tidbits. Characters and pedestrians alike will interact with you, if they don't think your hair style is trendy they'll flame you, if they think you've got one too many folds of fat they'll call you a fat bastard. And get this... if one of your bosses isn't impressed with your appearance he might just deny you work. Yes, the Orange Grove Families are going low-carb, and you can spot them at the gym on a treadmill with pork in their pockets. Just a little extra motivation to keep fit and trim.

After that bit attempt at comedy, you might just be wondering what the hell was revealed in this German article, so lets get to the nitty gritty, shall we. For starters the game will be triple in length, triple. That means a lot more story, and probably a lot less filler.

Quick Facts

• The HUD of San Andreas, and interface overall, will be very similar to its predocessors
• CJ's gang gets its name from the section of Los Santos known as Orange Grove
• There will be less pop-up and structures such as houses or buildings can be seen at a much greater distance
• The textures will be photographed aswell as self-drawn
• The number of licensed music tracks in San Andreas will have tripled
• At the time of the article's printing, San Andreas is at 80% completion
• Even the dual-layer DVD was too small for San Andreas, but new compression techniques make it possible on the PS2

Also in the article is the technical side of things. For one thing, draw distance has drastically improved and that pesky pop-up problem in previous titles wont be much of a problem anymore. In fact, adjacent trees will be rendered as a group from distance. If you get closer they'll be rendered seperately. That way, a bigger draw distance is possible. Pretty cool, huh?

More on the technical side, the goal of the programmers this time around was to achieve a constant frame rate of 30fps. In hippie talk: the game don't lag much, dude! Which is a commendable, albeit to me subordinate, acomplishment. In the same breath, animations overall have seemed to improved -- and here's an interesting tidbit... the camera will automatically zoom behind CJ at the press of a button. Then you can aim freely with the analog stick. But alternative to that, there will also be the aiming-aid. Pretty chunky tidbit, if you ask me.

Fact or Fiction? The German magazine revealed one new screenshot and a map. It was later found out by the GTA community that the map was a fake. Except the GTA community was wrong. Rockstar wouldn't permit the magazine to show a shot of the map (via pause menu), so they opted to draw up what they saw without the boring detail of the countryside and mountains in between. Those arguing about Los Santos being to the lower-right side of the map... it's all about angle isn't it? Fact!

All-in-all, the magazine doesn't tell us much that we don't already know, but it succeeds in adding fuel to the fire and hyping us up that much more for the game this fall. And if it seems like you're getting an overload of info from this article, really you're not. But don't worry, Germans have a history of being persausive to the masses anyway, don't they?