Grand Theft Auto: The Definitive Edition came out over a year ago. Tragically, many people bought it. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people weren’t happy.
Grove Street Games responded by updating the game over the following year. Since the first anniversary, however, updates have slowed. The most glaring issues have been fixed or at least made less bad.
There is still much left to fix, but Grove Street Games apparently doesn’t think it is worth the effort.
Neither do I.
The Definitive Edition doesn’t need more updates; it needs a remake.
Grove Street Games cannot fix their game because their game’s core selling point–its visual style–is fundamentally trash.
Being a remaster, updating the visuals was the Definitive Edition’s primary purpose. Gameplay improvements were minimal.
The Definitive Edition was crippled from inception when Grove Street Games chose an art style that made these classic crime games look like early 2000s animated cartoons; the characters became dolls, the cars became toys, and the cities became like 3D renders of city play mats.
The art style is so bad that updates cannot fix it. Only a complete overhaul can do that.
Grove Street Games’ only choice is to shelve The Definitive Edition and move on.
Maybe next time, Rockstar will give them the time and budget they need to do the job right.
Like CJ when he returns from the East Coast, my stamina bar is low, so I won’t hold my breath.
Warning: I have delivered my point. What follows is a few hundred words of salty rambling. Continue reading only if you are eating and your food lacks salt.
Rant 1: I Told You So
When the Definitive Edition trailers appeared, seemingly everyone loved what they saw. The videos had overwhelmingly positive upvote ratios on YouTube. People were hyping up each other in comment sections and forums. “It looks exactly how I remember it from my childhood!” was a common thing people said.
I’ve never felt more gaslit in my life.
In my eyes, the trailers didn’t show anything closely resembling the classic PS2 games I’d grown up with. They showed shiny, smooth, plastic versions of what used to be beautiful games.
Gone was the grittiness and the atmosphere that gave these games such a strong sense of character. I saw a trilogy of games that looked better suited for mobile devices than modern consoles and PCs.
And yet, on the lead-up to the Definitive Edition’s release–and I remember this vividly because of how annoying it was–people claimed that the original versions were now “unplayable” because their graphics were “too ugly” and that the Definitive Edition’s improvements were now essential.
The general sentiment was that the graphics in the trailer and promo images presented a clear graphical improvement over the originals.
You can imagine my confusion when, on the day of the Definitive Edition’s release, people criticised its “cartoonish” aesthetics. It is as if GTA fans woke up that morning and realised they had eyes and could now see the horrifically ugly Definitive Edition graphics for what they truly were.
Gaslight upon gaslight! I mean, come on–the ugly visuals were the only thing Grove Street Games didn’t lie about! Pictures of Tommy Vercetti’s sausage fingers were all over the internet! It was all there!! And you said it was good!! Gahhh!!!
Rant 2: Defective Defenders
Not everyone hates the way the game looks. Even now, some say the Definitive Edition’s cartoonish art style is appropriate because the original games already looked cartoonish.
They point to the bright red blood effects, the colourful floating icons, and the slightly exaggerated character models.
They also point to the cover art, which uses comic book panels and comic book-style drawings, which they say indicates the game’s visual intent.
While it is true that the PS2 GTAs had a slightly cartoonish or comic-bookish look to them, The Definitive Edition exaggerates this aesthetic far beyond what is presented in the originals.
When looking at the originals, the aesthetic is overwhelmingly realistic. What cartoonishness is there is minor, indicative of the relatively light-hearted tone of the trilogy and of the compromises artists had to make with the PS2’s limited hardware.
The original 3D trilogy’s character models had fewer polygons to work with than character models today. The textures also had to be less detailed and the animations less smooth. Consequently, PS2 character models had blocky bodies and faces that looked painted on.
That doesn’t mean all PS2 character models were meant to look cartoonish–their blockiness, simpler textures, and more jerky movements were just an inevitable consequence of weaker hardware.
Remasters are supposed to improve outdated graphics while preserving and improving upon their visual impression. This often includes making artistic alterations, such as entirely redesigning character models to account for the greater detail enabled by higher polygon counts, or changing a level’s colour palette to account for new lighting techniques.
But if fans love how a game looks, changing an art style to something entirely different is risky.
You could change a game’s aesthetics completely and hope people like the new style better. But most of the time, you will only upset people who just wanted the original look with better graphics.
Rant 3: Defective Development
The Definitive Edition’s art style is a drastic deviation from the original game’s style. The thin vein of comic-bookness has been exaggerated into the art direction’s most prominent feature.
As a result, the authenticity and grittiness underlying the light-hearted tone of the originals is damaged. The Definitive Edition strays too far into comic-book territory.
Worse, due to the unpolished state of the Definitive Edition’s visuals, it looks downright bad, even if you like this sort of style.
The funny thing is that the Definitive Edition probably never had much of an ‘art direction’ anyway. Its development was so rushed, so chaotic, so poorly planned, funded, and executed that I doubt much thought was put into exactly how the game looked.
Most of the work has been done procedurally. The original games were taken, processed by algorithms, and spat out in higher fidelity forms.
Skin was smoothed, textures sharpened, surfaces began reflecting light.
Grove Street Games should have used this output as a template for their artists to alter and polish. That didn’t happen, though. They shipped the product without any regard for tone or consistency.
A Very Salty Summary
The visual style, the primary focus of any remaster, is too flawed to fix with updates. Rather than continuing to support the game, it would be better if Grove Street Games (or some other development studio) started remastering the trilogy from scratch, this time with a reasonable development cycle and proper funding.
In the end, it all comes down to Rockstar. Unfortunately, they don’t seem interested in the quality of their non-mainline games, so we may never get a good remaster of the classic trilogy.
Rockstar has the money to make it happen. They just don’t care.