Each title in the trilogy has over 40 Achievements to unlock and many are tied to completing key story missions. The miscellaneous Achievements include wasting 100 gang members and completing 20 unique jumps in Grand Theft Auto 3; listening to all of the music stations at least once and causing $1 million property damage in GTA Vice City; and reaching max weight and drowning in GTA San Andreas. Fairly typical tasks by GTA’s twisted standards.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition is out later this year for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC. It will release in the first half of 2022 for iOS and Android. Stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks.

This trilogy consists of remasters for Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Along with improved visuals, there will be “modern” gameplay enhancements but they’ll still maintain “the classic look and feel of the originals.” More details will be coming soon but starting next week, existing digital versions of these titles will be removed from retailers.

In addition to the remastered trilogy, Rockstar is celebrating Grand Theft Auto 3’s 20th anniversary with some special gear in Grand Theft Auto Online. These will be available in the Fall through different events and will include commemorative clothing and liveries. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition packs Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto 3, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, polished up to a modern standard for a modern audience. It’s still unknown what improvements fans should be expecting from the game, but it’s supposed to be more of a remaster and a remake.

Shortly before rumors of a remaster surfaced, parent company Take-Two issued DMCA takedowns for a number of popular mods for the game. Of course, none of it is confirmed as of yet, although given the rating, more information will be dropping soon. Stay tuned.

QTEs

Quick time events can be a great tool when executed properly. The Greek-era God of War games, for instance, used them to great effect to punctuate high octane action sequences in a great blend of cinematic and gameplay. The problem is, games that do that are very rare. QTEs more often than not feel unnecessary and arbitrary, and for every God of War, we have a dozen games that fall on the other end of the spectrum.

Being a Switch owner and port begging go hand-in-hand, and a game that people keep requesting a Switch port for quite often is Grand Theft Auto 5. Well, you might not be getting that, but there’s a chance that the series still ends up making an appearance on the Switch.

As Nibel recently pointed out on Twitter, Grand Theft Auto 3 was recently rated by the Australian Classification Board. Of the systems that are currently active, GTA 3 has been on PS4 and PC (obviously) for a while now, though the Switch and the Xbox One don’t have the open world revelation in their libraries. The rating could, then, possibly be for a release of the game on those two systems. It’s not concrete by any means, but there is a chance that it ends up happening.

This isn’t the only Rockstar game that was recently rated by the Australian Classification Board. Another one was Red Dead Redemption 2, leading to speculation that the long-rumoured PC release for the game could finally be on the way.

https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1177525806282809345

SPLINTER CELL: CHAOS THEORY

Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid are the old guard of stealth games in our industry (both are, sadly, off on a break for now), and both these franchises are well aware of that fact. For instance, Metal Gear Solid 2 allowed players to hold enemies at gunpoint, at which point they’d goofily shake their bodies and drop some ammo. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory poked fun at this mechanics, with Sam holding a guard in his grips in one scene and demanding ammo, to which the guard glibly tells him that it’s not like he can just make him shake and drop some ammo.

Do keep in mind, that though it’s natural to assume that when we talk about big game maps, we might be talking about open world games only- but that’s not the case. Whether its an open world game, or an open ended game that’s not particularly open world, or a huge map that we’ve seen in multiplayer play- it’s all fair game for this list. Also, do keep in mind that randomly generated maps were not considered for this feature.

A final note before we begin- there’s every possibility that we might have missed out on some game you were expecting to see on this list, and if we did, it’s either because the exact sizes of their maps aren’t known to us, or because we simply forgot! If it’s the former, and you know what the sizes are, please tell us! If it’s the latter, please remind us.

So without further ado, let’s jump into it.

#50. ASSASSIN’S CREED UNITY

The open world action by developers Ubisoft has its fair share of issues, sure, but its world is one aspect that can’t be faulted. It’s a joy to explore, and it’s also pretty big. At about 2.4 km2, there’s more than enough space in this virtual world to explore and lose yourself in.

This is not because of it’s fabulously successful and lucrative online mode though. While GTA Online has served as much more than just the cherry on top that most probably expected it to be, people generally hadn’t bought these games for online experiences. Gamers generally buy Grand Theft Auto to experience a massive, enthralling trip into organized crime with gritty, realistic characters and unparalleled freedom to unfold the story the way they see fit.

GTA 5 has arguably satisfied that particular need for gamers more than any other entry to the series and perhaps more than any other game, as evidenced by the massive, unprecedented profits that the game has raked in over the years since its release that are well into the billions. Out of all of the benchmarks that the fifth entry in the Grand Theft Auto series has broken, one of the more intriguing ones is the amount of online content that the game offers. Rockstar is no stranger to online modes that offer a fair amount of fun and longevity, but GTA 5’s online mode is an entirely different beast altogether.

In microtransactions, and microtransactions alone, GTA 5 has pulled in over 500 million dollars. The success of the ever-growing online mode for the game is not too surprising to those who have been playing it for a while, as they have seen the beefy list of options grow steadily with new content being added on a regular basis for a long time now. There’s no two ways about it; GTA Online is an incredibly successful endeavour in it’s own right, and due to this the amount of players engaging with it continue to fuel its expansion with their multiple purchases.

One question that seems to be inevitably barreling towards us, however, is whether or not Rockstar is losing sight of the essence of Grand Theft Auto at this point. It is a question that many are starting to ask, and understandably so. It’s true that the online modes are wildly popular and successful, and of course there’s nothing inherently wrong with Rockstar continuing to support it, but what is just as true is that many fans of the franchise are in fact single-player offline gamers, who have by now exhausted most if not all of what Los Santos has to offer, and are understandably starting to wonder about the next major entry.

After all, GTA 5 did come out in 2013, which is over a whopping 5 years ago. Granted, this is also roughly the same amount of time we had to wait between GTA 4 and 5, but even then, by 2011 we at least knew that GTA 5 was coming. Which was just 3 years after the launch of 4, so if Rockstar had any interest in sticking to that timeline, we would have had at least some sort of official word on Grand Theft Auto 6 by 2016 or so.

But here we are in 2019 without so much as a peep about another game. You could say that Rockstar is just focusing on Red Dead Online right now, but that doesn’t really explain the absence of 6 being on the way. Remember, Rockstar put Red Dead Redemption out in 2010, between GTA 4 and 5, and surely was working on both for a fair amount of time, so either Rockstar has lost the ability to multitask since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, which is stupefyingly unlikely, or they are purposefully holding off on a new game in the franchise. This is counter to what GTA players have grown to expect from the series up to this point, and does add some fuel to the suspicion that perhaps Rockstar is indeed more interested in squeezing more money out of the current iteration for several more years.

Another noteworthy about-face for the attitude that Rockstar seems to have about it’s flagship series is the lack of offline DLC expansions to the main game. For a game that has been out for this long and seen this much success to not have gotten any major offline expansion to the stories of the characters is pretty weird. In fact, Rockstar has gone so far as to officially clarify that they are intentionally focusing on GTA Online because of how well it has exceeded their expectations, and that single-player DLC for the game was neither “possible nor necessary”.

Great news for fans of the online mode, not so great for everyone else. There are many possible reasons for this, and to be fair the fact that the console generation changed right after the initial launch of the game, forcing Rockstar to devote a fair amount of resources to immediately get next-gen versions of the game running, potentially setting other plans back, is worth considering. But at the end of the day what we are seeing here is a focus on microtransactions and online content, which until recent years would never be associated with Grand Theft Auto games this heavily.

Is Rockstar truly changing how they view GTA? Are they no longer interested in supporting single-player experiences with that particular franchise? The suspicions that GTA is headed for an online future don’t seem to be as concrete as some may think, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have merit. It’s hard to imagine any developer turning away all of the money that can be made with microtransactions, which basically have no overhead compared to what they bring in when comparing that to the cost and benefit of adding stories and offline content.

To be sure, we’ll have to wait and see how Grand Theft Auto 6 turns out. Surely some clues as to where Rockstar is headed was in Red Dead Redemption 2, but to be totally sure where Rockstar wants to take GTA, we’ll have to see what they do with it. GTA 6 is coming, it’s just a question of when. If they choose to focus on online content with the next game primarily, surely the essence of what makes those games great will be gone to some degree.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

However, the questions that we’re concerned with today to aren’t nearly as lofty as that. In this feature, we’re going to take a look at fifteen times developers left unanswered mysteries in their video games. Do note that there might be spoilers ahead.

GHOST LADY (RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2)

We’ve spoken a great deal about the swamps in Red Dead Redemption 2 over the last few weeks, and about how freaky they are, and one of the reasons that we’ve brought up for that on a few occasions is the ghost lady in the swamps. Her melancholic cries and wails sound chilling as they drift through the fog and hit your earns, and watching her for a distance and then suddenly just vanishing as you begin to approach her is truly frightening, as is her manic dialog that seems to hold no meaning at first glance. So far, we can’t say we know anyone who’s been able to figure out just who or what the ghost lady in the swamps is, and that just makes her even scarier. Even scarier than those damn alligators.

Oh, also, has anyone seen Gavin?

Grand Theft Auto 3 is now available on PSN for £7.99. If you just started playing games, have been living under a rock for the last decade or so or just didn’t give a shit back then, you can buy it now. Or if you want to. That too.

A PSN re-release of GTA 3 was leaked earlier, and it’s been confirmed now. Another rumour suggested that GTA 3 was being remade using GTA 4’s Rage engine. That would have been epic. Who knows, maybe it could still happen. Read the full story here.

GTA 3 released back in 2001, and it was the first true 3D open world game, and the level of freedom it offered astounded one and all. Not only has GTA 3 spawned multiple sequels, it has also inspired other franchises like Saint’s Row and Sleeping Dogs.

Sure, you couldn’t shoot guards in their knees with your bows, but it was still fun.