GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas remaster trilogy out this year claims rumour

This year could now see the release of four GTA remasters (pic: Rockstar Games)

A remaster of all three PS2 era GTA games is supposedly due out this year, for every format under the sun including Nintendo Switch.

Rumours of a remaster of at least one PlayStation 2 era Grand Theft Auto game have been gaining ground for the last few months, but the assumption was that Rockstar Games wouldn’t release anything this year as they were concentrated on the next gen versions of GTA 5.

According to a report by Kotaku that’s not the case and remasters of GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas will all be out by the end of this year, probably.

The new versions are referred to as remasters but apparently they’ll use Unreal Engine and will be a mix of ‘new and old graphics’, which sounds at least halfway towards a full remake. One of the sources describes the new versions as looking like ‘heavily-modded’ PC versions of the originals.

Supposedly the user interface will be updated but otherwise the remasters will try to stick as close as possible to the original PlayStation 2 aesthetic.

Development of the remasters is being led by Rockstar Dundee (née Ruffian Games), who are best known for their work on Crackdown 2 and 3. They have apparently also been helping out with the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 versions of GTA 5.

The news fits with the recent announcement by Rockstar owners Take-Two that they have three new ‘iterations of previously released titles’ in production. It was assumed at least one of these was a GTA game but until now no one suggested it was all three.

Although plans have changed, and may do so again, Kotaku claims that currently the three GTA games are to be sold as a single trilogy set, possibly as a digital-only release, perhaps meaning that they only count as one of those three projects.

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Currently, the idea is to release the remasters in late October or early November, for literally every format possible, including Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC, Stadia, and smartphones. Although the PC and smartphone versions may slip to next year.

The new versions of GTA 5 are due out on November 11, so the remasters are going to be coming out at almost exactly the same time.

Take-Two has already spoken about how it wants to make more remasters and remakes and supposedly Red Dead Redemption 1 is next in line to get more ‘ports’ if these GTA remasters are successful.

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