We’ve known that Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas is coming. This has been public knowledge for a while now, but at long last it looks like Rockstar Games has decided to shed the tiny scrap of political sensitivity it had in this long-standing crime-spree videogame series; the protagonist isn’t white. To be fair, the first two installments of the GTA series featured not a “white guy,” but rather a little dot that ran around in a strictly 2-D environment. The new hero, CJ, suffers from no shortage of melanin:

CJ is expected to be on a quest to clear his personal reputation and protect his street gang in a city that is based upon Los Angeles and San Francisco in the same way that GTA3’s Liberty City was based on Chicago and New York City. For a long time it has been perfectly acceptable for video games to revolve around soldiers, plumbers, and italian mafiosos. Finally we get a video game about a black gang member. That isn’t why I’m going to buy the game; I will be getting this due to the great many hours of enjoyment I’ve gotten from GTA2, GTA3, and GTA Vice City. I just wish we had a little more info about changes in the game engine itself… I look forward to riding a BMX around with my boxers showing, though.