Fans were excited to jump back into the oldGrand Theft Autotrilogy with thedefinitive edition re-release for modern consoles and PC. Unfortunately, they were greeted with a buggy mess filled with questionable artistic decisions. It was made all the worse by the fact that the older titles were taken off most storefronts.
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Rockstar has since announced its intentions to fix the trilogy and has also already returned the original versions to various marketplaces. The developer has a ton of work on their hands because there is quite a lot they need to fix. A couple of updates have already been released to remedy a lot of issues, but if the company wants to really pleaseGrand Theft Autoenthusiasts, they should enact some of the recommended changes below.
8Improved Aiming In GTA 3 And Vice City
For the first time, players are able to aim freely inGTA 3andVice City. Unfortunately, it is extremely sluggish and imprecise. It is not even up toSan Andreas’standard,let alone Grand Theft Auto 5.
Updates should address this and make aiming more intuitive in the older titles. As of now, players are better off using the older auto-aim function.Shooting still works well inSan Andreas, however.
7Textures Loading In Faster
Textures often load at a snail’s pace. It is not rare to see a shot of the city filled with extremely blurry objects meant to have finer detail. In a package where the newest game is over fifteen years old, slow-loading textures feel like they should never have been a problem at all.
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Fortunately, it also looks like an issue future updates can fix.As long as Rockstarkeeps rolling out fixes, this problem will most likely go away.
6The Ability To Play With The Older Graphics
One major complaint of the new package is not even with technical issues or performance drops. Many fans are simply dissatisfied with the aesthetic choices made when bringing the games to a new engine and updating the visuals.
Character models in particular have received heaps of disapproval. While the simple solution is to play the older games, there are some improvements like checkpoints and autosaving that players still want to keep. This improvement is unlikely to happen, but being able to play with the older visuals would be a solution to so many issues people have.
5Smog In San Andreas
Some of the changes in the re-release feel like they take away deliberate aesthetic choices the original developersmade for the PS2 releases.The most notable of these is the smog inSan Andreas.
While a way to shield technological limitations of the console, it is also a part of the game’s visual identity and many feel the game loses something without it. Los Santos is like Los Angeles, after all. Letting players turn smog on or off in the options would please a lot of fans.
4Better Character Models
It is hard to tell if anything can be done about the lackluster reimaginings of the character models. Some of them look okay, likeGTA 3’sprotagonistand Tommy Vercetti, but others look like they came from straight out of a nightmare.
San Andreassuffers the worst from this. If these character models can be fixed, then they absolutely should be. If Rockstar only fixes technical issues and doesn’t address the character models, then the company is misunderstanding half of fans' complaints.
3Save States
A lof older games let players save anywhere once they are re-released. Compilations for 8 and 16-bit games let players save anywhere and load up exactly from where they were. TheGrand Theft Autotrilogy is old enough that they should allow players to do the same.
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It would help exponentially during certain missions with exceptionally unforgiving checkpoints. The casino heist inSan Andreascomes to mind. It would also help curb frustration when the game crashes.
2Various Bugs And Crashes
To be fair, the updates Rockstar already has released have helped with bugs and glitches. All the same, there is still plenty that needs to be done in this department.
Worst of all, the games still do not run at a steady 60 frames per second, which seems absolutely inexcusable for a re-release coming almost 20 years after the original product. One never expects a re-release to add problems absent from the classic.
1Flying Controls In San Andreas
San Andreasis an extremely ambitious game. Unfortunately, all of its features are not as smooth as they should be.Flying in helicopters and remote-controlled planes is wonky even in the re-release. Would it have hurt the developers to make it smoother and more intuitive?
There are several missions from Zero in San Fierro centered around flying and they are easily the worst missions in the game. It would have made the game a lot more enjoyable if the flying worked well.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Editionwas released on July 23, 2025, and is available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS
