The first trailer for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy is here, and it's made quite a first impression. This remaster of GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas gives these old PS2-era games a significant visual overhaul, with higher resolution textures, real-time reflections, and improved foliage. Anyone expecting a complete remake, with the level of fidelity of GTA 5, will be disappointed—and should probably reign their expectations in a little in future. How were Rockstar ever gonna recreate five cities with that level of detail? But it's still a dramatic visual upgrade, and I personally cannot wait to revisit Liberty City, Vice City, Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas.
I love what Rockstar has done with the art style. I'm glad the games haven't been altered beyond all recognition, and have retained the familiar aesthetic of the originals. They've just taken those chunky, low poly models and environments and slathered them in modern visual effects. You catch a few glimpses of this in the trailer—like when you see a shiny car driving along the Las Venturas strip and the lights of the casino reflecting off the hood, or Claude blowing up a car in Liberty City with a rocket launcher, his body shiny and wet from the rain. It's an unusual but effective mix of primitive early 2000s 3D graphics and contemporary visual FX, and I think it works brilliantly.
The character models are particularly striking. The textures are sharper and there might be a few more polys at play, but they still have that distinctive, cartoonish look they had in the old games—but enhanced by realistic lighting and shadows. It makes them look almost like action figures, which shouldn't work, but absolutely does. The animations don't seem to have changed, which suits the exaggerated character models, but also keeps it feeling like the games we know and love. Rockstar has struck a nice balance here between making these new versions feel fresh and look decent on a 4K display, but without losing any of their nostalgic power.
A shot in the trailer comparing the original and upgraded versions of Vice City's famous Ocean Drive gives us a good idea of how the environments will be improved. The palm trees look more realistic, there's more traffic and pedestrians on the streets, and neon signs and lights have been added to the buildings, adding to the garish '80s vibe. The more you look at this scene, the more you realise how much of an impact these fairly subtle visual changes will have. It's especially noticeable when you look in the distance. Before, distant streets and buildings lost detail and looked blocky and lifeless—but now the extra visual fidelity stretches as far as your eye can see.
In another scene, taken from Grand Theft Auto 3, we see Claude driving a car along a street in Liberty City in the pouring rain—a great showcase for the new lighting system Rockstar has implemented. The heavy rain creates a hazy mist in the air, which the headlights of the other cars on the road cut through realistically. We see the elevated train platform above Claude's car reflecting on the rain-slicked hood, and raindrops landing on the asphalt. I also love how a light on the car's dashboard illuminates Claude's face. It's incredibly atmospheric, in a way the original games could only dream of. I can't wait to revisit these familiar locations transformed.
Elsewhere in the trailer I noticed that trees in the countryside in San Andreas are denser, details on buildings are more visible from a distance, some of the giant neon signs in Las Venturas have been completely rebuilt, the water looks a lot more realistic, and extra props have been added to beef up the interior scenes. I wasn't expecting anything more than the original games being upscaled to 4K, but there's a lot going on here. GTA: The Trilogy launches on November 11 for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC, and it looks like an ideal way to relive those classic games—hopefully with some combat and control improvements under the hood too.