Rockstar Games has released updates for each of the remastered Grand Theft Auto games included in the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition collection that make these maligned versions play better, as well as making them look more like the original games released on PS2 back in the early 2000s.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition contains remasters of three PS2-era Rockstar titles—GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas—that were criticized greatly the moment they launched in November 2021. The games had some nice visual upgrades, but played poorly, contained many bugs, ugly character models, new glitches, and broken textures, and felt unfinished overall. Some updates improved the games in the months after launch, but for two years, the GTA Trilogy remained a mostly disappointing update of the classic open-world games. Then in 2023, Netflix released the remastered trilogy on phones and they were surprisingly better. Now, about a year later, the changes in that release (and more) have finally been applied to the console and PC ports.
On November 12, Rockstar Games quietly released a new update for the controversial GTA Trilogy on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. Twitter user BeskInfinity has done a fantastic job documenting many of the new updates, big and small, to the classic games.
The most noticeable change, as documented by BeskInfinity, is a new “Classic Lighting” option that was first included in the mobile ports from Netflix. In games like San Andreas, the new lighting makes the games look more like the PS2 originals, complete with orange moody sunsets, purple deserts, and dreary blue thunderstorms. Fog has also been applied to all of the games, making the worlds feel bigger as you can’t see all the way across the map.
Beyond improved lighting and visual changes, like better-looking high altitude clouds in San Andreas and bloom being added to streetlights in cities, the new update also fixes some animation bugs. One of the nicest changes you’ll feel when playing the update is the ability to run around while aiming with any gun, not just the Uzi or pistol.
Rain in the remastered trilogy, which originally was so bad it was fixed quickly after launch, has been tweaked again and now looks even better, especially when driving around the cities. Shadows also update correctly now, and the maps have been updated to be more accurate and show all landmasses and streets correctly.
Rockstar Games has also removed Grove Street Games’ logo from the splash screens of each game. I checked and it’s not there anymore. Grove Street was responsible for the original remasters and some older mobile ports of GTA games, and was heavily criticized by the community for how they handled these projects. The Netflix versions of the games were developed by Video Games Deluxe, who previously ported L.A. Noire to VR.
So are the remastered GTA games worth playing in 2024? I mean, that depends on what you want out of them. If you want an easy way to play the old games on modern hardware with some quality-of-life improvements, like autosave and a weapon wheel, then the Trilogy is better than ever and a solid option. If you want perfect emulation of those old games, then the Trilogy is still not close to offering that.
Sadly, if you play on PS4, Xbox One, or Switch, you don’t have access to the update yet and are still stuck with the older versions. Ultimately, the Trilogy is still a bit of a mess, but it’s a lot better now than it was in 2021. And that’s nice!
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