The gaming industry has seen its fair share of disappointing releases. Year in and year out, flops come and go, some on a much larger scale than others. By comparison, 2021 doesn’t seem all that terrible, with flops like Balan Wonderworld and Battlefield 2042 sticking out the most. However, it also marked the launch of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, which packaged Rockstar’s classic 3D trilogy of Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas into one remastered compilation.
To say that all three titles are beloved among fans would be an understatement, especially given how they influenced modern open worlds as we know them. Even with the trilogy’s lack of footage leading up to the launch, everyone was still hyped. Of course, the rest is history.
Performance issues on consoles, misspelt signs, glitches, bugs, crashes, broken animations, oddly modeled characters (some who looked nothing like the original games), that rain from San Andreas, which made it difficult to see anything, and more were only the beginning. That it cost $60 rubbed many the wrong way – its Metacritic user score plummeted to 0.4 at launch and currently sits at 1.1. Not that the critics’ scores were any better at 54 Metascore for the PS5 version based on 47 reviews. The less said about other platforms, the better.
It was a messy time, but even with Rockstar issuing refunds on PC, the trilogy sold over 10 million copies as of February 2022. That’s roughly three months after launch, seemingly indicating that most would wait for fixes. Maybe they were content with the current package. Blame was allocated across the board, firssports bettingt to Grove Street Games (which also faced criticism for its 10th-anniversary ports of Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City) for its handling of the project, then to Rockstar for going ahead with the release despite its state.
Regardless, fixes did arrive roughly a month after launch, adding a cinematic camera to all games, fixing several misspelled signs, and improving stability (a classic). It even prevented rain from appearing indoors – ignore why this happened in the first place. However, the most significant ones would appear on Android and iOS, when those versions launched in December 2023.
Published by Netflix and developed by Video Games Deluxe, it improved the experience significantly. Not only were the visuals better than the current version on consoles and PC, but it also captured the feel of the classics. The obvious question then was when it would arrive for other platforms, if at all.
After nearly a year of no news, the update is finally available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch, bringing a laundry list of fixes, improvements and even some quality-of-life features. Between all the fixes and updates done throughout the years, the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition is worth dipping back into, even if it’s still not quite perfect.
Though official patch notes aren’t available, community members like TJGM and VideoTechUK on Twitter have already begun compiling the most significant changes. Let’s start with the positive, the biggest being Classic Lighting, which restores the lighting in each title to resemble the original games.
It now applies across all areas in each title, so instead of Liberty City looking oddly bright at night during the rain, it’s now appropriately dark and borderline gothic. San Andreas looks phenomenal, with the orange hues of the opening restored and looking better than ever. It’s a massive jump visually, but that’s only the start, as volumetric clouds are now present in San Andreas when flying high in the sky.
Shadows now realistically move in time with the position of the sun. Those awkward shifting shadows of overhead structures from before are gone, and the movement is now more natural. Fire has some additional bloom and lens flares added alongside new, more realistic glass-breaking effects. Cubemap reflections are back and look much better than the previous screen-space reflections. Several issues with frame pacing have also been addressed, and performance is better on current-gen platforms, PC and even the Nintendo Switch.
Of course, each game has its own share of fixes. The neon lights at Malibu Club and other locations in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City have been restored while Grand Theft Auto 3 has better rain effects and texture improvements. Sandstorms in San Andreas are now properly portrayed, Market Station looks far better (with lighting added to the tunnels), CJ’s character model while cycling has been fixed, and perhaps most important of all – the lamp posts throughout the world are now orange instead of white. It’s truly a brand new world – even the birds have returned across all three games.
There are a fair number of gameplay improvements as well. Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City now allow for shooting and moving with weapons like shotguns and assault rifles, which previously wasn’t possible. Movement animations while aiming also look far smoother. You can also pause during cutscenes and save files to display the date and time, making it far easier to discern.
All this being said, there are still issues across all three titles. CJ’s face is more in line with the original, but other character models, including Denise, still look completely out of place. The level of detail is also underwhelming and in some cases, downright awful, while the camera will continuously auto-center if moved, which is most annoying when flying. Poorly upscaled artwork can still be found in San Andreas, and interior lighting requires changes to resemble the original games.
Nevertheless, the current state of the trilogy is far superior to its launch. It wouldn’t be without controversy, of course, with Grove Street Games’ logo and name removed from the intro and main menu screens. Founder Thomas Williamson criticized the removal of developers from the game’s credits (which isn’t the case) but also revealed that the update “includes hundreds of fixes that were provided by those developers that stayed out of players’ hands for years.” Which fixes the studio specifically worked on in this update is unknown, but it does raise an interesting point.
Considering the fixes arrived in the mobile versions last year, what took so long to bring them to other platforms? An agreement with Netflix? Extensive testing to ensure they landed without breaking more things than they fixed? We’ll never know, but the timing is odd (or maybe not, considering the holiday season).
Regardless, if you’ve been on the fence about picking up Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, it may still be worth waiting for at least a price drop. With the issues still plaguing the trilogy, which are far from insignificant, it wouldn’t be remiss to wait for another update to drop and potentially improve them further. It can evoke that nostalgia from the originals, thanks to the lighting changes and volumetric fog. However, there’s still more work to be done before the redemption story is complete.
