(Written with WordPad. RIP WordPad 1995-2023)
Do you remember that time Rockstar released GTA - Definitive Edition? Every now and then, I get to thinking about its existence, and how gracefully disgraceful it is.
October 8, 2021, Rockstar/Take-Two announced this glorious remaster with pride. The "definitive" edition, they called it. "Definitive", as if this was the pinnacle. The ultimate classic GTA experience you will ever find, anywhere. Nothing comes close.
They had so much ego invested in this project, they had to take down a few decade old mods just to clear the path for this fantastic experience.
Then came November 11, 2021. They put this pile of excrement onto their stores, and it quickly became a laughingstock in mainstream gaming. You don't have to look far on YouTube to see people ranting and raving about it.
"What's wrong with it", you ask?
Awful modeling jobs made characters look like boneitis victims or hellspawns.
For retexturing, they relied mostly on automation and terrible AI upscaling. Text found on shops and advertisements would end up being misspelled, botching the punchlines.
In addition: crashing, broken gameplay mechanics, and... well... gosh... everything you would expect from a terrible AAA launch these days.
On the deliberate side of things, they had to cater to modern demands.
The new graphics completely sucked the life and soul out of the artstyles (per typical).
In GTA SA, they felt the need to disable fog... not knowing that the whole reason for that fog was to give the illusion that the map was huge, and to conceal the island's borders from across the mainland.
They brought over the weapon wheel from GTA V because... yeah, that fits.
Hot coffee rides again
With all that mentioned, surely Rockstar would look back with a hint of regret and perhaps pull their game off the stores and... do better?
Well, they did take it off the stores... but not exactly out of regret. Turns out, an old demon had come back to haunt them.
From November 12th to November 15th, Rockstar Games took down the Definitive Edition from their store and made it unavailable on the PC Launcher. Files related to the notorious Hot Coffee minigame were found in the source files of SA.
20 songs from the original release, that were meant to be removed due to licensing complications, were also left in. In between that time, a lot of customers started filling up the Twitter feeds of Take Two Interactive and Rockstar with requests for refunds.
On November 19, 2021, Rockstar published a message on their website reacting to the complaints. A simple "sorry for the problems", and a promise to improve the broken mess. Unfortunately, putting duct tape on a sunken ship doesn't exactly fix the root problem.
As of right now... Definitive Edition is still out there. It receives periodic updates every now and then, but fundamentally, it is still an insult to the original masterpieces in every aspect.
The graphics are nonetheless laughably bad. The gameplay elements are still goofy. If Rockstar had any sense, they'd wipe the Definitive Edition source files from existence - preferably deleting them via Shift + Del.
What a spit in the face.
I think about all the poor saps out there who never touched a classic GTA. How many of them fell for such fancy words, thinking that this was a greater experience than what the classics (or even community made mods) could ever achieve. Modern audiences are conditioned to expect nothing less than grandeur, and they recoil at graphics that are too retro, or old gameplay choices that are too provocative.
SA was practically the greatest thing I had ever witnessed at the time of its release. No game could replicate it. Not even close. It did not deserve this fate.
And yes, it's not like the classic version is unobtainable, but it's not the one being put on the marketing pedestal anymore.
In my personal opinion (very valuable, I know), I suppose it is the ADHD gamer minds of today that are partially responsible for this... thing... even coming to fruition in the first place. It is (as mentioned before in the Snapian scriptures) just another golden example of: just because you can make everything chrome, doesn't mean you should make everything chrome.
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