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Finally, after months of speculation and leaks, Rockstar has officially confirmed a remaster trilogy for Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas.
The announcement was made nonchalantly on Rockstar's Twitter account today, in a simple and short trailer featuring images from the trilogy. The tweet also confirmed that the game will indeed launch later this year, as some sources had suggested.
Alongside the trailer, a series of tweets goes into further detail about the announcement. The first appears to indicate that we will indeed be getting our hands on the trilogy very soon: "Later this month marks a very special anniversary for Rockstar Games: 20 years since the original release of Grand Theft Auto 3".
The statement continues: "In addition to carving a new path for the open-world genre, Grand Theft Auto 3 established Grand Theft Auto as a cultural phenomenon, alongside its two subsequent - and equally legendary - entries in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas."
The tweet thread closes with confirmation that it will be released "later this year", and will be coming to all current-generation platforms.
This news confirms that the long-awaited re-releases will be taking to launch window initially meant for the GTA 5 re-re-release. This is likely to please fans who were left disappointed by the new GTA 5's offerings, with the overall feeling being that it does not need another launch. The PS5 trailer - which gave fans a first look at the re-re-releases gameplay - quickly became one of Rockstar's most disliked videos on its YouTube channel.
Sadly, this announcement also coincides with the takedowns of numerous GTA modding projects. One of the many reasons why rumours about this trilogy re-release persisted was that, all at once, any mod that claimed to be a fan remake of the three classic GTA titles was being threatened into taking their work offline. Most recently, these take-downs went after a modding project that added quality of life features to GTA 3 and Vice City.