Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is now four years old.
The collection hits this anniversary while it still sits with a terrible reputation among longtime fans.
The Trilogy That Rockstar Should Have Celebrated
This is a collection of the three most pivotal games in Rockstar’s history, Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Thanks to a deal with Sony, all three games launched on the PlayStation 2. But some fans have created a misleading idea that these were console exclusives.
In fact, all games came to Windows and Xbox a year later or longer. But it’s clear that the relationship between the Grand Theft Auto franchise and the PlayStation 2 were huge roles in both the franchise and the console being incredibly successful.
This trilogy demonstrated the cutting edge of technology at the time. As Dan Houser revealed in a recent interview, what made these games so impressive at the time was the AI that they were able to place into them.
Of course, fans also fondly remember the worlds and stories of Claude, Tommy Vercetti, and CJ.
Why These Games Needed A Definitive Edition
Rockstar made limited rereleases of these games, including some 2010s ports to mobile platforms. But one can see the logic behind making a remastered collection.
Rockstar was following a growing trend of retro game collections from Capcom, Square Enix, Digital Eclipse, and others.
Now happens to be a very good time for these collections, as it’s considerably cheaper and easier to produce them. At the same time, it’s possible to make outstanding new versions of these games with HD graphics and sound, while also under cheap budgets.
But that’s where Take-Two And Rockstar made mistakes.
The Folly Of The Trilogy We Got
We won’t litigate why this collection turned out poorly all over again. Most gamers should know well at this point that main studio Grove Street Games received limited resources and support from Take-Two.
While they consulted with the original developers at Rockstar North, Grove Street were directed to use AI to upscale textures. This was intended to keep development costs down.
As we also found out from Grove Street, Take-Two held back a major update that could have fixed the games’ biggest problems for two years.
The combination of a poorly planned and executed development process, and enmity between Take-Two and Grove Street, meant that this trilogy has not even been improved upon even further.
Since then, Rockstar and Take-Two rereleased Red Dead Redemption to the Switch and PlayStation 4. That debunked rumors that Take-Two cancelled more remasters. Take-Two also had support studio Video Games Deluxe make newer updates for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition for release on mobile, to be published by Netflix.
Those improvements also made their way to PC and consoles, but they have not addressed all the issues with the games. Sadly it seems unlikely that Take-Two will make further improvements to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. But perhaps they will commission a new set of remakes a few years from now.
At that point, we hope they make some better choices, such as making these remasters one game at a time.
