In a surprise that no one saw coming, developer Rockstar Games has released a brand new patch for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition almost three years to the day, the disastrous and buggy remasters were released for the first time on consoles and PC.

The update, which was released on Tuesday to current-gen consoles and PC and to PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch today, fixes a handful of lingering issues plaguing the now-infamous remastered trilogy. Improvements include a new “Classic Lighting Mode” that aims to better replicate the specific look and feel of the original classics from the PlayStation 2 era. Rockstar is abbreviated patch notes also say that “many fixes and improvements” have been made, which players have documented with images on social media.

Among the changes are better volumetric fog that makes San Andreas, Vice City, and Liberty City feel less small. Lighting and weather report are more distinct between different places in the city. Several animations that were broken have been fixed, including the way CJ drinks soda And sits on bicycles. Some AI-scaled elements and spelling errors have been corrected. And the bug that allowed players to access the second and third islands of Grand Theft Auto III from the start was finally fixed.

Some brand new features have also been added. Cutscenes can now be paused. New lighting effects have been added fires and explosions. Weapons that required players to fire while stationary Grand Theft Auto III And Vice city can now be used while running.

It’s been a long road to recovery for definitive editions of Rockstar’s flagship classics. When released in November 2021, all three games were marred by game-breaking bugs, typos, clunky character models, and terrible performance. The port company in charge of the remasters, a developer named Grove Street Games, had obvious problems porting the game from Rockstar’s old RenderWare engine to Unreal Engine 4. The reliance on AI also riddled the signage and the textures of the game with errors which attenuated the division of the series. satire.

To make matters worse for players, Rockstar removed the original versions of all three games from Steam, as well as the 10th Anniversary Editions from the consoles’ storefronts before their release. The developer’s parent company, Take-Two, also released DMCA Takedowns of popular mods that have painstakingly updated the visuals of these older games. Whether players liked it or not, the broken (and $50) Definitive Editions were the only way to play the trilogy that popularized the open world genre.

Shortly after release, several patches were deployed to eliminate the most glaring bugs. The mobile port of the game, released in 2023, launched in better shape than its console counterparts. Most of the fixes rolling out this week are actually features already present in the iOS and Android versions.

While it’s great to see these games continue to receive the love and attention they deserve, it remains unacceptable that gamers had to wait three years to play a better optimized version of 20 year old titles. And yet, even after the most recent patch, they don’t come close to reaching the quality of the originals. Hopefully this is a sign that more improvements are still on the way.

Looking to the future, Rockstar Games has a huge 2025 ahead of it. The much awaited Grand Theft Auto 6 should be released next fall according to Take Two, despite the developer’s advice. rich history to miss planned launch dates.