Within a few hours of ‘Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition’ launch, it had to be pulled down from Rockstar’s online store yesterday itself. Fans outcry is reasonably expected because after a long wait they were getting a chance to play a modernistic take on open-world classics in GTA Trilogy Remaster.
Undoubtedly loyal GTA fans liked the improvements but Rockstar showed next to no gameplay of GTA Trilogy Remaster. Any recent release by Rockstar has always had a gameplay overview, but obviously, that’s not the case with this Remaster. Adding to the woes is a review embargo in place. Seems, Rockstar knew exactly what they were pitting out.
However, the launch and its failure did not completely surprise who knew the studio behind the GTA Trilogy Remaster. Yes, it is Grove Street Games, as they are now called, originally were called War Drum Studios. They do not enjoy a good reputation with earlier works including X360/PS3 ‘remasters’ of GTA: SA and mobile ports. All infamous for their very dubious quality.
Many of you will remember that enhancements done by Grove Street in these ports were shabby and of poorer quality compared to the original. Bugs were introduced that weren’t in the original games and never got fixed all these years later. There were irritating performance issues, plus the same problem with lazy texture work leading to typos and misspellings.
Well, history has repeated itself. After playing for a few hours players are staring at a boatload of glaring issues. Rockstar has already earned a reputation for being lousy at fixing bugs. With the services for the Rockstar Games Launcher and supported titles down for 17 hours, the loyal fanbase who have bought the game are in a quandary.
PC downtime has impacted players on other Rockstar games including Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V that cannot be played either. They are pouring out as echo chambers so as to dissuade everyone to buy the game.
It is not only the PC players who have got locked out. Before the launch on Playstation, the PS4 version of GTA Trilogy Remaster had to be temporarily pulled from the PlayStation Store. The players who had got the pre-ordered PS4 digital version got locked out at midnight at their local time.
Players are complaining about the need for fidelity and performance option in the game. It is expected that the game this old should give the best of both worlds. Check out somewhat a big list coming out after a few hours of play
Players whose gameplay has been ruined by Rockstar find memories of old titles haunting them. These aren’t pardonable mistakes as in “We didn’t know how to fix the bugs” at the developer level. They feel that they are strategic mistakes from Rockstar higher-ups who assumed that they can pull off a quick payday by re-releasing some of their old, beloved games without investing the necessary manpower and time to actually make these games stand up to modern standards, at least the technical ones.
Today a dataminer uncovered non licensed music and uncompiled code with developer comments in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. He found that the music that was earlier removed from San Andreas due to expired licences was discovered in the game, however, it is disabled in the code.
The worse part is that Rockstar has delisted all the old versions for the GTA Trilogy Remaster gameplay. Moving forward this is becoming a strategy to kill the competition since they are aware that the original games and community patches play way better.
Players who got a chance to play are of the opinion that the game isn’t terrible but it’s not worth $60 approx, nor does it look like 2 years of dev time was spent on this. If we look at the track record of Rockstar devs, we cannot expect the fixes to land sometime soon. It is better to try hands using a crack version.
For those who are not aware, Rockstar Games’ remastered 3 of its classic Grand Theft Auto titles. They include the famous ones- GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. They were scheduled to launch on 11th November at 8:30 pm IST. The trio is dubbed ‘The Definitive Edition’ and can be now purchased on the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC via the Rockstar Games launcher.
Share with us whether you tried your hands on the GTA Trilogy Remaster gameplay. If yes, what issues did you face!