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This is a page for all the maps of the Just Cause game series.

Maps

See the full size picture to read the details. The Burnout Paradise map is actually 26 square miles and should be slightly smaller than the Far Cry 2 map.

Map sizes

The Just Cause game series is known for having some of the largest maps for "sandbox"-type games.

  • The playable area of JC1 is 1,025 square kilometers.
  • JC2 has a playable area of 1,035.55 square kilometers, although the map loads an infinite ocean. See Game limits.
  • JC3 is about 45 by 45 kilometers, making it about 2,025 square kilometers. However there's some empty sea around the map until the game pushes the player back at some distance.
    • In some promotional materials and interviews it's reported to be "the size of Panau" and in others "just over".
  • The JC4 map has been revealed as being 1024 square kilometers.
    • In August 2018, Amazon, BestBuy and Steam were erroneously describing the game world as being only 100 km2. This was fixed after the map was revealed.
    • Despite the seemingly smallest size, Solís actually has the most usable landmass. This was specifically stated before game launch.

Features and criticism of maps

Just Cause games provide in-game maps (in or near the PDA, Rebel drop and Supply drop menus). The following is a list of their good and bad features.

Just Cause

  • The map does not provide info about settlement names.
  • In some places it's difficult to distinguish a military base from a village, due to the similarity of icon design and/or the icons obstructing each-other when zoomed out.
  • The main complaint is the lack of a player controlled map marker, which makes navigation difficult. It's easy to get disoriented when flying an aircraft for a long distance. Mission objectives however do set a map marker and the distance to it is displayed on screen.
  • The Provinces of San Esperito are marked onto a separate very low-detail map. This makes it hard to compare the two maps to find the province limits. Some of the below screenshots were created a player having heavily edited the two maps together, to super-impose them over each-other.
  • The game does use real world co-ordinates, but these are only listed at the Safehouse names and therefore only useful in revealing the location of San Esperito on the world map.

Just Cause 2

  • Has more features, such as more detailed settlement and race markers. Also, the map is more colorful and generally a LOT more detailed.
  • There is now a player-controlled map marker and the distance to the marker is displayed on screen. This is a very helpful major improvement.
  • The map has coordinates. These are a system of local co-ordinates displayed as X and Y, starting with 00 at the top left corner of the map. The exact location of Panau on the world map is only revealed in the final mission A Just Cause. See screenshots below.
  • There's no accurate way to set the map marker, because a a single pixel is like +/-5 meters. This causes all seemingly accurate co-ordinates to be inaccurate by about +/- 5 m.
  • There are many different icons in the map and each type can be separately turned on and off to conveniently find things.
  • The map also displays clouds moving over the terrain and moving the map while zoomed in at mountains reveals that the map is actually 3D, giving the impression that the player is looking down from a satellite.
  • Faction areas of influence are displayed by colored zones that are super-imposed over the map. This is a major improvement over JC1 that used a separate map for this.

Just Cause 3

  • Uses real world coordinates.
  • Level of detail is notably downgraded. The map is now all blue and white and covered with some dirt. The dirt isn't actually a part of the map. When the map is moved, it reveals that the dirt is sort of like on the inner surface of a glass panel that covers the map.
  • Settlement symbols only appear once the map is zoomed in far enough.
  • Some areas of the map are always covered by a province name.
  • While the co-ordinates are now seemingly even more accurate, they are now a lot harder to accurately get. That's because when the map is zoomed in and out of any location the co-ordinates change too. This might be a lesser, or a completely non-issue for consoles that have a permanent + on the screen, but for the PC it's confusingly set to where the player last clicked. The last clicked location is obviously not highlighted, so the co-ordinates are usually completely random. The only way to get them is to zoom in all the way and then click on the player location marker. See more about this at Just Cause 3 Bugs and glitches where the problem was first described.
  • Several settlements are not marked on the map. Conveniently there are few of them and the co-ordinate system makes them easy to list.
  • JC3 no longer has a mini-map at the corner of the screen.

Just Cause 4

  • Accuracy and general level of detail have been improved over JC3 and the map is again colorful.
  • There are no coordinates in the game. This makes it very difficult to accurately describe the locations of things. As seen on pre-launch gameplay videos, the game was likely meant to have these, but the feature was cancelled at some point. The co-ordinates seen on the pre-launch gameplay videos refer to the location of Medici.
  • The beta map was shown to have clouds, similarly to JC2, but the final one lacks this.
  • It's impossible to zoom completely out to see the whole map at the same time.
  • It's very inconvenient that the different game menu navigation buttons are on screen at the same time as the map as this reduces the amount of screen space available for the map. Seemingly there is more information available on screen at any one time, but really it results in things being very cluttered and the map is harder to use when less of it is seen. Using a bigger screen obviously counters this and ultimately it's a matter of getting used to.
  • This might not be a problem for consoles, but on the PC it's very inconvenient that the different game menu navigation buttons are on screen at the same time as the map. That's because the map can't be zoomed out all the way, so a player has to use the mouse pointer to move the map by repeatedly clicking and dragging it. This can result in accidentally clicking on the edge that's covered by various unrelated menu navigation buttons.
  • The region borders are highlighted only as long as there's a nearby front. Once the area is conquered there are no more region borders at all.
  • Just like JC3, the region names are always on the map and obstructing the areas that they cover.
  • There are several settlements that don't have a name, or icon. JC3 had some of these too, but now that there are no co-ordinates, it's very difficult to describe their locations in a reasonably short way.
  • There's a number of settlements that are completely mis-labeled, or wrongly described. A supposed town can actually turn out to be a couple of farm houses, or the other way around. See List of misplaced icons in JC4‎‎.
  • In some areas there are icons and names for lakes and lagoons. This is new as no previous game had any icons for natural objects.
  • As with JC3, this game does not have a mini-map at the corner of the screen.

Just Cause - San Esperito

All maps of San Esperito on this wiki:





Interactive map of San Esperito

Map:San Esperito unmarked points of interest‎.

Just Cause 2 - Panau

All maps of Panau on this wiki.



Map from the official Just Cause website

Notable places in Panau
  1. Mile High Club
  2. Ski Resort
  3. Panau Falls Casino
  4. Panau International Airport
  5. Panau Capital City - Panau City
  6. Giant satellite dish - PAN MILSAT
  7. Cape Carnival rocket base.
  8. Karl Blaine's Residence
  9. Roaches HQ
  10. Reapers HQ
  11. Ular Boys HQ
  12. Snow Peak
  13. Desert Peak
  14. Tropical Peak
  15. (?) - Hot air balloon

Interactive maps of Panau

Just Cause 3 - Medici



Interactive map

Main article: Interactive Map of Medici.

Just Cause 4 - Solís

Main article: Solís.

The map has officially been stated to be 1024 km2, which is the size of San Esperito, but it has more usable dry land than the previous games, so in that sense it's the biggest one yet.

JC4 map icons

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