Someone back a couple pages said riots, which is the first thing that went through my mind when I started reading the hypothetical reasons they might close off parts of the city. R* have been going for more realism in their recent en devours, and all the talk about the almighty dollar and the visually apparent decline of welfare for many of the folks shown in the trailer lead me to believe that a riot could be a very possible scenario we might encounter. People get fed up with the declining standard of living and lash out. Perhaps they enact Marshall Law for a certain area, say downtown which during the riots could get completely trashed. They don't want people roaming around continuing to loot and harm others, so they tell everyone to stay put or they'll shoot on sight. This goes on until order is regained and the area is repaired, which could be a while, essentially plenty of time to fit in some 15-20 or so missions before said area becomes available. And so it is only lifted by progressing story in typical GTA fashion. But who's to say that it can only be one thing that causes the playable area to be altered. Past games if I remember correctly always had just one event happen that hindered travel. The notion I get from all the speculation I've read on this is that this is a major step up from IV, as it ought to be. Look at everything R* have accomplished since! So all this talk of a possible San Diego, or multiple playable characters, or any of this just awesome stuff I feel is completely possible because if there's one developer out there that truly cares about outdoing themselves each time, Rockstar is it!
