Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition Xbox Series X Review

The Grand Theft Auto series has one of the biggest and most profound legacies in entertainment. Setting standards for open-world games and timeless narratives that often depict uneasy amounts of violence and social commentaries on sensitive or overlooked topics this franchise has continued to push video games in many ways. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is supposed to represent some of gaming's greatest titles, Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Instead this "Definitive Edition" insults the legacy of these legendary games. 

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition packages Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Each title is a masterpiece that gamers have been playing for years. With a lot of fans modding and creating content highlighting the world, characters, and messages of these games. The narratives for each are timeless crime dramas that have each protagonist rampaging through a unique city still hold up today. Claude doing jobs in Liberty City for some of the most dangerous criminals to take his revenge against his ex-girlfriend for leaving him for dead, Tommy Vercetti building his drug empire in Vice City, and Carl Johnson returning home and slowly becoming one of the most powerful men in San Andreas all include incredible writing and well-designed characters. But the whole point of this "Definitive Edition" was to experience these games with improved visuals and enhancements, which it fails at.

Regardless of which game you play, it becomes very apparent that the developers did not take this seriously. Most players will begin with Grand Theft Auto 3 and the opening cinematic shows exactly what is to come. The rain effect in all 3 versions looks like milk, solid white lines falling from the sky and it follows the player everywhere. It's just a filter draped over the screen and it's so unnatural that seeing it will make you wonder "How the hell did anyone approve this!?". And the visual issues do not stop there: character models look off, textures loading is slow, Grand Theft Auto 3 looks so clean that it removes the gritty atmosphere the game was known for, the fog effect from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas removes the sense of depth within the map, clipping, crashing, missions failing to load properly, frame rate dips, and the list just keeps going. It is almost like there was no quality assurance for this product and they rushed it out to milk the millions of fans that love this franchise.

It's sad because modders, who spent years refining these games with visual improvements, better character models, and even improved gameplay mechanics were silenced. Take-Two Interactive removed the original games so those mods are no longer useable and even started lawsuits targeting these people. Gamers who thanks to hard free work kept these games alive, even GTA V which is one of the most profitable entertainment products of all time owes its constant success over the years thanks to these modders. When compared to these versions the moded versions of the original games easily surpass everything provided in this collection. Even the original releases of these games offer a better experience. When the rain effects of a PS2 game surpass the current-generation game you know something went horribly wrong.

There are some improvements made to these versions. The weapon wheel is a great addition that makes selecting weapons easier than cycling through all of them. There's also a "Checkpoint" system but in reality, it's a mission restart option. If killed you can restart the mission with all the weapons you started the game with. This makes things a lot easier since in the original dying would mean losing everything and needing to rebuy everything, in Grand Theft Auto Vice City this was a serious problem.

Knowing what could've been is possibly the worse thing because we do know what could've been an ideal re-release of these games. Again, modders provided a free blueprint of what was possible to modernize these games. Improved gameplay mechanics, how these titles should look with more conventional models and textures, and so on. These are all on YouTube and it just makes this "Definitive Edition" look even more like an inferior re-release.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition fails to give these legendary games the treatment they deserve. The visual updates are poor, the titles have many graphical and performance issues, and the overall experience is just insulting. This game was not ready and the overwhelming amount problems are too large to ignore. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition is inferior to the original games and represents these phenomenal titles in the worse way possible.
 

Adam Siddiqui,
Managing Editor, NoobFeed