Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition - GTA 3 trilogy remaster

[Hace El Oso]

No. It's just just worse for the gamer.
But the colours/lighting are a solved problem, and the solution would be easy to implement. Gameplay is not quite as easy.

It’s astounding how far the standards in lighting, for example, have dropped since the 2000s. I was just looking at Splinter Cell and Hidden & Dangerous 2, which are head and shoulders above almost anything that comes out now.

 

[Baron Dupek]

another reason to spew'n'spam memes

 

[rusty_shackleford]

 

[J_C]

I'm not well versed int eh GTA mod scene, but are there some good graphical mods for Vice City and San Andreas I can use instead this remaster?

 

[Alphons]

Poor Misty

 

[Zeem]

This shit looks weird. The OG games weren't supposed to look cartoony, so this attempt of modernizing material surfaces, lighting, effects just make the un-updated elements pop out more. I have watched this trailer 4 times, VC and SA look increasingly more disgusting through each watch because their visual is seemingly having an internal clash.

The original GTA games were all meant to look cartoony. They weren't like Jet Set Raido cartoony, but the character models were always stylized looking as opposed to going for realism. Even when they toned it down in the official art after GTA3, they were still pretty fucking cartoony looking.

GTA doesn't drop the character models looking cartoony until GTA5. Like even the GTA4 character models have these exaggerated facial features along the same lines as like Def Jam Fight for NY. From the original GTA up to 4 the series was always pretty cartoony.

The character models were slightly exaggerated to compensate for the low polycount, and as polycount increased they were less and less exaggerated. It's just that sticking to accurate proportions at low poly means the picture looks less realistic than emphasizing the bits where detail is needed (head, hands, feet).

You wanna know how you know this isn't true? The characters are exaggerated in GTA and GTA2. It wasn't a stylist choice because of the 3D polycounts, it was just a stylistic choice. If they wanted the drawings they put in GTA, or those little talking heads in GTA2 to look realistic they could've done that, but they didn't, instead they made the characters look like this:

Now they may have stayed with that stylistic choice because of the PS2, not that there weren't games on the PS2 that same year that looked better and had characters with more realistic proportions, but these were stylistic choices they made for GTA before 3D models ever figured into the equation.

Also GTA4 and GTA5 came out on the exact same generation of hardware and GTA4 is still using exaggerated character models but GTA5 isn't really anymore. You put a character's face from GTA4 next to a character's face from GTA5 and they almost look like two different series.

GTA 2 had a lot of stylistic choices that didn't persist into the later games. My point is that 3D GTA games still aimed for relative realism within their (fairly limited) polygon budget and as that polygon budget increased exaggerations became smaller. Would you call Quake and Half-Life cartoony?

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Thankfully Rockstar removed the originals from sale, so you don't have to choose whether to shell out $70 for a "remaster" or $5 for originals.

The old Steam version was one of the least bad PC port versions.

I shit you not, I thought this was a screenshot from The Sims before the horrible realization set in.

It’s a pain in the ass getting San Andreas to run correctly on modern OSes, but yeah, Vice City and III run pretty much flawlessly.

 

[Multidirectional]

GTA3 was a technological breakthrough and people were amazed by it. What are you comparing it to, crazy taxi and driver?

Literally any 3D game with huge maps? Quarantine? Daggerfall? Terra Nova: Strike Force Centuri? And hell, why not Driver too.

Almost any high profile game back then was making steps forwards regarding technological progress you dummy. And plenty not so high profile too.

Mafia came out what, a year after GTA III? Compare both visuals and physics in the two and it's like they are from completely different eras.

 

[Outlander]

It’s a pain in the ass getting San Andreas to run correctly on modern OSes

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

It’s a pain in the ass getting San Andreas to run correctly on modern OSes

? Doubt it all you like, on Windows 8-10 Mouselook is fucked, mouse rarely works on menu screen, and AA, vsync, and Draw Distance options don’t actually do anything without mods; all of these are well-documented issues.

 

[Israfael]

There's a lot of problems with San Andreas (well, any other game on this engine too) - you can't remove FPS limiter without serious adverse consequences (cars not moving, cutscenes locking up etc), motion blur is impossible to disable with fast moving cars, haze effect fucking everything up (very annoying) and many other things. On the other hand, it's hard to fix it all with mods without getting something tacked on (I installed some sort of fix for all of that and got the enemies shooting 3x as far as they should which turned them into killing machines if they shoot at the other NPCs (I noticed it only during one of the last missions where you paradrop on top of the former mad dogg house)), so getting working 'vanilla' game without all the crap would be nice , but alas Rockstar does not care about anything (and I'm pretty sure VCPR and all other funny stuff will be cut because reasons and prudeness of the modern society)

 

[AW8]

In the other picture you posted, Cam has an extra ear floating next to his head.

I just checked the trailer and that's actually his hand, moving in front of his face.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

This shit looks weird. The OG games weren't supposed to look cartoony, so this attempt of modernizing material surfaces, lighting, effects just make the un-updated elements pop out more. I have watched this trailer 4 times, VC and SA look increasingly more disgusting through each watch because their visual is seemingly having an internal clash.

The original GTA games were all meant to look cartoony. They weren't like Jet Set Raido cartoony, but the character models were always stylized looking as opposed to going for realism. Even when they toned it down in the official art after GTA3, they were still pretty fucking cartoony looking.

GTA doesn't drop the character models looking cartoony until GTA5. Like even the GTA4 character models have these exaggerated facial features along the same lines as like Def Jam Fight for NY. From the original GTA up to 4 the series was always pretty cartoony.

The character models were slightly exaggerated to compensate for the low polycount, and as polycount increased they were less and less exaggerated. It's just that sticking to accurate proportions at low poly means the picture looks less realistic than emphasizing the bits where detail is needed (head, hands, feet).

You wanna know how you know this isn't true? The characters are exaggerated in GTA and GTA2. It wasn't a stylist choice because of the 3D polycounts, it was just a stylistic choice. If they wanted the drawings they put in GTA, or those little talking heads in GTA2 to look realistic they could've done that, but they didn't, instead they made the characters look like this:

Now they may have stayed with that stylistic choice because of the PS2, not that there weren't games on the PS2 that same year that looked better and had characters with more realistic proportions, but these were stylistic choices they made for GTA before 3D models ever figured into the equation.

Also GTA4 and GTA5 came out on the exact same generation of hardware and GTA4 is still using exaggerated character models but GTA5 isn't really anymore. You put a character's face from GTA4 next to a character's face from GTA5 and they almost look like two different series.

GTA 2 had a lot of stylistic choices that didn't persist into the later games. My point is that 3D GTA games still aimed for relative realism within their (fairly limited) polygon budget and as that polygon budget increased exaggerations became smaller. Would you call Quake and Half-Life cartoony?

My point was that even before going 3D, DMA/Rockstar North were not aiming for realism. You can say it's just cartoony because of the limitations of the hardware of the time, but that's overlooking what they were doing pre GTA3 when characters were just drawings and the thing you're talking about wasn't an issue. Most GTA games didn't aim for relative realism...not until the most recent game in the series anyways. You know that art that's on the front cover of the Grand Theft Auto 3 case? That is what the in-game graphics were aiming for, not realism, but cartoons. Some of the characters in GTA3 are like one step away from being a Dick Tracy character. San Andreas does flirt with more realistic style than the previous two before it, but then 4 is back to having characters with more exaggerated looking.

I wouldn't call Half-Life, the original one, realistic, or even say the aims of it were realism. Half-Life is however not as cartoony looking as it original was when they first showed it off and Freeman looked like a lumberjack, and everyone had big round eyes. The HD Pack for Blue Shift that changes the character models does also change the whole style of the characters from cartoonish to some thing aiming for realism.

I look at the characters in Quake and I'd guess they probably had something like Simon Bisley more in mind than reality.

 

[Ezekiel]

There's a lot of problems with San Andreas (well, any other game on this engine too) - you can't remove FPS limiter without serious adverse consequences (cars not moving, cutscenes locking up etc), motion blur is impossible to disable with fast moving cars, haze effect fucking everything up (very annoying) and many other things. On the other hand, it's hard to fix it all with mods without getting something tacked on (I installed some sort of fix for all of that and got the enemies shooting 3x as far as they should which turned them into killing machines if they shoot at the other NPCs (I noticed it only during one of the last missions where you paradrop on top of the former mad dogg house)), so getting working 'vanilla' game without all the crap would be nice , but alas Rockstar does not care about anything (and I'm pretty sure VCPR and all other funny stuff will be cut because reasons and prudeness of the modern society)

Does that mean if I ever desire to play the old games again I should use a PS2 emulator?

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

There's a lot of problems with San Andreas (well, any other game on this engine too) - you can't remove FPS limiter without serious adverse consequences (cars not moving, cutscenes locking up etc), motion blur is impossible to disable with fast moving cars, haze effect fucking everything up (very annoying) and many other things. On the other hand, it's hard to fix it all with mods without getting something tacked on (I installed some sort of fix for all of that and got the enemies shooting 3x as far as they should which turned them into killing machines if they shoot at the other NPCs (I noticed it only during one of the last missions where you paradrop on top of the former mad dogg house)), so getting working 'vanilla' game without all the crap would be nice , but alas Rockstar does not care about anything (and I'm pretty sure VCPR and all other funny stuff will be cut because reasons and prudeness of the modern society)

Does that mean if I ever desire to play the old games again I should use a PS2 emulator?

You should probably play those Xbox ones that looked better.

 

[schru]

The lighting in the Xbox version of GTA III is pretty strange and apparently some visual effects in its version of San Andreas are missing:

(2:48)



(1:53)

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

Looking at the Youtube comments (yeah, I know) and everyone is raving about 'muh modern controls' and 'muh 4K'. Tbh, you can't expect much from the developers when the fanbase is this retarded. There are some videos already pointing out all the graphic improvements, but all of it is more or less expected, except for the "cartoony" look of the characters and the stupid color palette. Like someone pointed out, if characters looked more like the original cover art, "cartoony" wouldn't be a problem. Rockstar used to be all about style, they can't drop the ball on this.

Given current year, I'm not optimistic. Still, I'm waiting for more gameplay reveals to form a definitive opinion.

To go on a slight tangent, compare "let's make it cartoony" 30 years ago to now. One is not like the other.

 

[Zeem]

This shit looks weird. The OG games weren't supposed to look cartoony, so this attempt of modernizing material surfaces, lighting, effects just make the un-updated elements pop out more. I have watched this trailer 4 times, VC and SA look increasingly more disgusting through each watch because their visual is seemingly having an internal clash.

The original GTA games were all meant to look cartoony. They weren't like Jet Set Raido cartoony, but the character models were always stylized looking as opposed to going for realism. Even when they toned it down in the official art after GTA3, they were still pretty fucking cartoony looking.

GTA doesn't drop the character models looking cartoony until GTA5. Like even the GTA4 character models have these exaggerated facial features along the same lines as like Def Jam Fight for NY. From the original GTA up to 4 the series was always pretty cartoony.

The character models were slightly exaggerated to compensate for the low polycount, and as polycount increased they were less and less exaggerated. It's just that sticking to accurate proportions at low poly means the picture looks less realistic than emphasizing the bits where detail is needed (head, hands, feet).

You wanna know how you know this isn't true? The characters are exaggerated in GTA and GTA2. It wasn't a stylist choice because of the 3D polycounts, it was just a stylistic choice. If they wanted the drawings they put in GTA, or those little talking heads in GTA2 to look realistic they could've done that, but they didn't, instead they made the characters look like this:

Now they may have stayed with that stylistic choice because of the PS2, not that there weren't games on the PS2 that same year that looked better and had characters with more realistic proportions, but these were stylistic choices they made for GTA before 3D models ever figured into the equation.

Also GTA4 and GTA5 came out on the exact same generation of hardware and GTA4 is still using exaggerated character models but GTA5 isn't really anymore. You put a character's face from GTA4 next to a character's face from GTA5 and they almost look like two different series.

GTA 2 had a lot of stylistic choices that didn't persist into the later games. My point is that 3D GTA games still aimed for relative realism within their (fairly limited) polygon budget and as that polygon budget increased exaggerations became smaller. Would you call Quake and Half-Life cartoony?

My point was that even before going 3D, DMA/Rockstar North were not aiming for realism. You can say it's just cartoony because of the limitations of the hardware of the time, but that's overlooking what they were doing pre GTA3 when characters were just drawings and the thing you're talking about wasn't an issue. Most GTA games didn't aim for relative realism...not until the most recent game in the series anyways. You know that art that's on the front cover of the Grand Theft Auto 3 case? That is what the in-game graphics were aiming for, not realism, but cartoons. Some of the characters in GTA3 are like one step away from being a Dick Tracy character. San Andreas does flirt with more realistic style than the previous two before it, but then 4 is back to having characters with more exaggerated looking.

I wouldn't call Half-Life, the original one, realistic, or even say the aims of it were realism. Half-Life is however not as cartoony looking as it original was when they first showed it off and Freeman looked like a lumberjack, and everyone had big round eyes. The HD Pack for Blue Shift that changes the character models does also change the whole style of the characters from cartoonish to some thing aiming for realism.

I look at the characters in Quake and I'd guess they probably had something like Simon Bisley more in mind than reality.

What DMA did in 2D games is not really relevant considering how much they changed the formula in 3. The only thing that could be considered cartoony about 3 and beyond is slightly exaggerated character proportions, but the colors, lighting, effects and all all non-people models are very much aiming for realism (or live-action cinema look).

 

[Frank Capicoli]

Left before, right "definitive edition".

 

[Butter]

Left before, right "definitive edition".

No criminal would be so morally suspect as to support the CSA or have Southern pride.

 

[Gromlintroid]

Looks like trash, no need to buy it.

 

[Alphons]

 

[Danikas]

Poor Misty

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[toughasnails]

From what I saw people elsewhere were excited by what was shown. I can't say I like it, the visuals remind me of last gen Saints Rows games only maybe there is a more pronounced clash between characters and "realistic" environments here. Not awful but not great either.
There was a way to do a high fidelity adaptation of something like San Andreas that indeed had vaguely comic book like visuals without being full on cartoony or cell shaded. I'd be happy even with a simple HD rerelease that added modernized controls and checkpoints at the starts and maybe for different phases of bigger missions.