This is CJ, after he bought some gang colors. There's a picture of him on the right which shows how he appears at the start of the game. This is his mother's house. The game begins when he comes home after his mom has died.
This is CJ's neighborhood. You can see the freeway to the north. There's an empty aqueduct to the east. Rockstar North did a good job of making the area feel a little run down.
But it doesn't take long to steal a vehicle and head for the Hollywood hills. Technically the game calls it Vinewood.
In the interest of fairness, I should point out that it isn't all beauty or destroyed beauty. There are a lot of graphical glitches in the game, as well. This is a poorly placed exit camera, showing me carrying a stolen TV out of someone's home. Robbery is a decent way to make money in the early game. Spend ten minutes of your life, get $40k of in game money. You can even rob your own safe house(?). Abusing the save system to make money gambling might be faster, though.
Take a good last look. It's time for a change of scenery.
I consider this the Green Acres phase of the game, between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It sucks, mostly, but it's supposed to.
Farm livin' is obviously not the life for CJ. The game has a lot of RPG elements, including the ability to beef up CJ. He could be trimmer and still be as strong, but when I was working on his stamina, I was worried that if he ran out of fat, he'd start losing muscle. I like him this way. In my first playthrough I basically made him look like Wesley Snipes in Blade. It's not a bad look, but I felt a little bad for not giving CJ room to be CJ.
Plus I'm too lazy to punch the run button on the treadmill for five minutes. :P
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