Last week Rockstar Games finally revealed its worst-kept secret: remastered versions ofGrand Theft Auto 3,Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, andGrand Theft Auto Vice Cityall packaged in one place inGrand Theft Auto The Trilogy: The Definitive Edition. There have been rumors surrounding the collection for months, but now it’s finally official and,according to Rockstar’s teaser trailer, “coming soon.” Although there’s plenty to be excited about with the remastered titles, Rockstar has officially said that it’s going to be removing the three titles it’s remastering from all digital marketplaces sometime this week.
That means that soon, the only way to play the three games digitally will be throughGrand Theft Auto The Trilogy: The Definitive Edition. This is potentially troubling, not just because the studio would be forcing people looking to play its older titles to pay the reported $60-70 that it’s charging for the remasters, but because it could potentially set a precedent for studios working on remastered editions of their older titles moving forward.
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The Issues of Making GTA the Trilogy the Only Playable Versions of GTA Titles
Rockstar is likely hard at workfinishing up what’s left to do onGrand Theft Auto The Trilogy: The Definitive Editionbefore its release. The studio likely changed a handful of things about all three titles to make them fit more within the modern gaming landscape that they’ll be re-released in. This means that certain quality of life fixes might have been made, visuals will be updated, and the games will, hopefully, play much smoother overall. These are the types of changes that fans are looking for in a remaster, essentially giving an older game a fresh coat of paint to make it hold up better when looking at it through a modern gaming lens.
While those changes are for the better of the games, it’s still important to preserve the original releases. As with all types of media history, it’s important to remember where a medium started to be able to appreciate where it is now and if Rockstar makes its older titles permanently unavailable in favor of the games' remasters, then the history of one of gaming’s most iconic franchises might disappear almost entirely. While there are still physical copies ofall threeGTAgamesfloating around, it’s much easier to simply purchase the games digitally and appreciate them there. The work preserving the early games in theGTAseries is already done, but Rockstar is taking that away for seemingly no reason other than to promote the sales of the remastered trilogy.
That isn’t to suggest thatGrand Theft Auto The Trilogy: The Definitive Editionis being made as a quick cash grab, in fact, quite the opposite. It’s clear that Rockstar truly cares about its franchise and it seems like the studio wants to make its older titles more available than ever before. That said, there’s always a chance with remastered games that the new edition of the game could be worse than the originals. It takes one look atSilent Hill HD Collectionto see that remastered versions of games aren’t always better.
If a situation like what happened with theSilent Hillseries were to happen withGrand Theft Auto,where the remastered versions of older titles are worse-received than the originals, then players might be stuck having to choose between playing ruined versions of beloved classics and not playing them at all. Unlike what happened withSilent Hill, however,the olderGTAgames are already widely available, but Rockstar is purposefully restricting access to them to promote the remasters. It makes sense from a business perspective why the studio would do this, but it potentially sets a worrisome precedent moving forward. Plenty of studios admire Rockstar and if it’s taking its games off of digital storefronts in favor of solely promoting remastered versions, other studios might follow suit and the digital preservation of video games might take a major hit.
