Like SWAT 3, SWAT: Urban Justice takes place five years in the future in L.A. This time the focus is not on terrorism but on gang wars that the SWAT team has to deal with. Before each mission there will be a cinematic that will tell the storyline surrounding it. Kanga said that gang warfare is not the only thing your SWAT will have to combat in the game, "There are other missions that have other bad guys in it," he said, "because that's what SWAT does. There are gangsters in it. There are just some plain old thugs. There are bicycle messenger thieves." The environments are loosely based on real LA locations like the Mayor's Mansion, Griffith Observatory and the Santa Monica Pier (although most of these will be renamed to fictional locations in the final game). While in the game, Kanga said that players will be able to use what they are calling "football plays" that will simplify how the SWAT team members are controlled without the need to control each individual team member. "The reason we did this was to make it easy and also because this is the way SWAT teams really work," he said, "They are smart enough to know what they need to do." The AI for the game is also designed to work with any level no matter how its designed.