Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition has come under fire since its launch this week, and not just for having a name that’s way too long. It’s a funny little hybrid of a thing. It’s not just the same game ported to new consoles - it has clearly received a considerable graphic upgrade. But at the same time, is upgrade the right word? It looks smoother, and in some cases, a lot better - but in other cases the jank is off the charts, and the signs appear to have been ‘translated’ into modern graphics using machine learning, making for a bowtload of speling errrrrors. Here’s the thing though - this ‘trilogy’, if we’re calling it that, never looked that good. It would be great if it hads received a proper 2021 triple-A polishing, but in some ways, it’s even better that it’s a bit of a mess.

GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas came out in 2001, 2002, and 2004. I have a point with this, but can we just pause for a second. Remember when that was a thing video games used to do? Since 2013, we have had zero new GTA games outside of ports and remasters, yet between 2001 and 2004, we had three, including arguably the best ever? To avoid upsetting people, I will not expand further on which game I think holds that title.

Related: The Mystery Of The Ghost Cars Of GTA: San Andreas And The Strange Truth Behind ThemIn any case, these were by far the most ambitious games launched in each of their respective years. They were vast in scope, narratively complex in a way most video games were still discovering, layered in gameplay options, and welcome recipients of huge runtimes even without the endless cheats and pissing about we all did. They were not, however, the best looking games the year they came out. In a frame by frame side-by-side, none of these GTA titles would win - certainly not as comprehensively as they win by scale.

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GTA 3 launched the same year as Ico, SSX Tricky, and Final Fantasy 10. For Vice City, it’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Kingdom Hearts, Mafia, and Super Mario Sunshine. San Andreas, meanwhile, comes up against Half-Life 2, Burnout 3: Takedown, Jak 3, and Star Wars: Battlefront. You might be shouting that some of those games were janky too, and yeah - they absolutely were. Sunshine especially is famous for it. But because GTA pushed the limits of the era further, it had a lot more jank a lot more often. If you were recreating SSX Tricky, The Wind Waker, or Final Fantasy 10, you’d cut all the jank out to make for a smoother experience. With GTA, the jank is as core to the experience as anything else.

Obviously, there are downsides. The spelling errors might be good for a laugh, but it’s weird that a studio as known for its attention to detail in GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 has booted something out with as many goofs in it as this. I get that it’s a good Christmas present for a lot of people, and it’s a fairly low priority, outsourced port compared to the attention being dedicated to GTA Online, Red Dead Online, and presumably somewhere, GTA 6, but still. This isn’t one spelling error everyone is taking a bit too seriously. The games are stuffed with them.

A screenshot showing Tommy Vercetti and the gang inside The Malibu Club in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - The Definitive Edition

In some places, the personality has gone too - which is weird, because usually it’s jank that gives a game a level of personality. The problem is the original games had jank almost by design. What made them impressive was the technological feats required to have them exist in the first place. An individual frame was not the selling point of any GTA game prior to GTA 4 - in fact, maybe it still isn’t. While Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the most gorgeous games ever made, GTA 5 is just a very good game that’s impressive because of its scope and the vast array of things you can do in the world, both alongside and away from the main story.

Because GTA 3 pushed the limits of what a 2001 video game could do, it leaned into slightly wonky character models and faces that had a little too much going on, just to prove it could. The new release smooths a lot of these characters out, presumably in the name of making them look better, but it just makes them generic. Both the original and the re-release are strained in places, but the originals were strained because that was the only way to possibly make a game like this run on console back then. This new trilogy is strained because that was the only way to possibly make a game like this arrive on shelves in time for Christmas. You can sense that the jank is desperate more than it is deliberate, and that makes it hard to completely fall in love with it.

Still, as Rockstar mentioned in its interview with us, it’s hard to recapture that charm on purpose while simultaneously upgrading the game enough to make it worthy of being a new title. Individual complaints about specific bugs, jank, or misspelled signs? Sure. But complaints that the games as a whole look a bit dodgy? That’s just GTA, friend.

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