The GTA Trilogy remaster was unceremoniously released yesterday to a chorus of disappointment from fans and anger from PC players. The game has been ridiculed online by fans who have been comparing it to fan-made mods which they say are better than Rockstar’s remaster. Worse, PC players haven’t been able to access the game at all. Almost as soon as the game went live on the Rockstar Game Launcher all Rockstar games were taken offline. As of the time of writing, all Rockstar games have been completely unplayable through the Rockstar Game Launcher on PC for over a day. It isn’t clear if the GTA Trilogy has anything to do with the downtime but Rockstar removing it from sale isn’t a good sign.
Meanwhile, those who have been able to play the game appear to be disappointed, to say the least. Posts criticizing the GTA Trilogy have become the top posts on almost every gaming subreddit that has them. There have been complaints of poor optimization, even on next-gen consoles. Graphics comparisons and character model comparisons are being widely shared too. Complaints about the character models looking weird, like in the picture above, and ruining the games are rampant. Some of the character model comparisons even appear to have already reached meme status.
It seemed inevitable that the reaction to the GTA Trilogy would be mixed at best. Rockstar announced the game just a few weeks before it was due to release. The company also showed very little about the game. There hadn’t been any gameplay videos until the day of release and many fans didn’t know anything about the game outside of the initial teaser trailer. So little information prior to a game’s release is almost always a red herring. Check out some of the comparisons players have been making below.