5 things GTA Trilogy DE did worse than the original

The GTA Trilogy DE (Definitive Edition) was released in 2021, and it received mixed reactions from the Grand Theft Auto community. While many players were happy about the remaster, others believed that this would ruin these titles' old-era aesthetics. Grove Street Games, the studio behind this remaster, managed to get a lot of things right, but also messed up quite a few others.

This is the biggest reason most gamers were skeptical of the Definitive Edition when Rockstar Games announced it back then. But, there are some specific points where the remaster fails terribly.

This article will highlight the five major things from the remaster that were better in these titles' original versions.

Note: This article is subjective and solely reflects the writer's opinions.

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5 things that were worse in GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition

1) The graphics

GTA Vice City, San Andreas, and Liberty City are part of the old-school 3D-era video games. Naturally, they have poorer graphics when compared to Grand Theft Auto 5 or Red Dead Redemption 2. However, they never felt creepy, and the characters didn't look disfigured.

On the other hand, the remaster has turned them strange with peculiar textures as well as character models. The body proportions of many look wrong, and most of the things in the game are too shiny with extreme bloom, making them look out of place.

This is one of the major issues that most fans have with these titles' Definitive Edition, especially with GTA San Andreas, due to CJ being a dynamic character that can be customized quite a lot.

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2) The soundtracks

Soundtracks are a crucial element of all the Grand Theft Auto titles, and allow gamers to immerse themselves in the story. Unfortunately, the remaster was missing quite a few iconic songs that were present in the original version.

Popular songs like Express Yourself by N.W.A and Hellraiser by Ozzy Osbourne were removed from GTA San Andreas Definitive Edition. Similarly, other tracks are missing from Vice City and Liberty City's remasters as well.

This is mainly due to Rockstar Games' history with licensing songs. The video game publishing company has always had one or another issue with song's rights holders and artists.

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3) Weightlifting and other features

While the other two games in the GTA Trilogy never had many complex gameplay mechanics and features, San Andreas did. Fans clearly remember visiting the gym and having to mash the buttons to lift the weights.

Well, the GTA San Andreas Definitive Edition removed this and replaced it with simple commands. In doing so, the developers took away the struggle and the feeling of accomplishment after lifting the heaviest weight.

They also made changes to several other features, like the camera movement in GTA 3 where Claude would look behind if the camera was pointed towards him.

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4) Cheats

Cheats are another critical part of the original Grand Theft Auto Trilogy, where players loved to spawn weird/overpowered vehicles or weapons to demolish the NPCs or the police forces.

Unfortunately, there's a long list of cheats that were removed from the remastered version. GTA San Andreas was hit the worst as it had the longest list of these fun codes. Below is a brief list of some of the cheats that have been removed from these titles:

Grand Theft Auto 3:

• Flying cars
• Invisible cars

Grand Theft Auto Vice City:

• Big wheels
• Invisible Cars
• Armed Female pedestrians

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas:

• Flying cars
• Infinite Health
• No Hunger
• Ninja pedestrians
• Invisible cars

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5) Bugs and glitches

The original versions of the remastered titles were in no way flawless. However, fans were expecting the developers to remove and fix all the old bugs and glitches before rolling out the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition.

Unfortunately, Grove Street Games added a couple of new ones on top of the bugs that were already present before. While Rockstar has rolled out several hotfixes to remove these issues, many remain to this date.

Players have reported bugs with fences and light poles in San Andreas, where the vehicles don't register these obstacles and either crash or simply ignore them. There are other similar glitches in Vice City and Liberty City as well.

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Hopefully, Rockstar will improve all these issues and also release a remaster of Grand Theft Auto 4 well before GTA 6 comes into the frame.