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Made a few edits to our old boy Tommy. Honestly, he's not too far off - this didn't take much time to transform. I'd like to see modding cracked not long after release and tweak stuff like this for real.

I was really hopeful for this but, my god. They did it again. They f*ckED it, again... They really had to gave this to War Drum Studios/Grove Street Games or whatever the f*ck their name is. (Which i find it really f*cking lame) This was Rockstar's last chance to redeem themselves and they f*cked it up. I just can't believe Aaron Garbut looking at this and approve this somehow. Like what were they thinking? Really stupid sh*t done like Phil's Confederate flag is removed, like why? It's just a stupid flag to represent the character A simple 1x1 image is gonna trigger somebody? God give me strength. MARK my words if simple sh*t like this removed from the game, i'm %100 sure, we will more bullsh*t cut stuff from the game. Everytime we progress we will get cringe. MARK MY WORDS, WE GONNA SEE MORE CUT BULLsh*t.

Well then: - GTA Online and its updates are bad because they are done by the B team, don't worry, guys, it's the same old Rockstar. - RDR2 Online and its updates are bad because they are done by the C team, don't worry, guys, it's the same old Rockstar. - E&E looks lazy because it's being developed by the tiny D team, don't worry guys, it's the same old Rockstar. - The remasters look uneven because they had to outsource it to a mobile developer, don't worry guys, it's the same old Rockstar. - Dan Houser's out, Les Benzies is out and Lazlow is out but don't worry guys, it's the same old Rockstar.

After the heated moment that was post trailer wasteland, I formed my opinions on the remasters. Granted I still view them in quite a negative light given what Take2 did to mods ever since last summer, I still have some objective stuff to say about the games: THE GOOD: -GTA 3 looks good. They tweaked the enviroment there quite a bit in some cases, like that one building with an arched alleywar near the building with the hidden package. -Claude looks pretty good, the best out of all the main characters. His model looks on point with the PC/PS2 rendition of it, and his clothes are pretty detailed. -The interiors look pretty good too. -I noticed they might implement alternative ped skins, like in GTA 4/5. You can see a Chinatown woman ped that has the same model but different textures. There is also another Chinatown woman that has a shopping bag akin to the shopper peds from Staunton, which wasn't in the original, so peds might have special items or something. There are also a few new peds I think. THE BAD: -The vehicles are a mixed bag. On one hand you get the Idaho which is clearly less blocky than on PC or the Stinger which did get a slight revamp, but on the other hand you get the police car which is identical to the PC model. Not even the XBOX model which has more details around the headlights, but the PC model -The L-Train path in 3 now looks weird, because they smoothed the rails. The path is clearly adapted to the old model which was blockier. Now it looks as if it slides. -They could've revamped the train, honestly, since they did that with a few cars. They even have a pretty good reference for how it could look, with roundier window frames. -Tommy looks weird. His hair looks good and it seems that they tried to keep the model proportions similar (no small head or whatever), but his face looks... off. They could've done the same thing they did for Claude and just remake the cutscene version, honestly. -Sour Johnson -Joey needs to get his old face texture back, because the current one looks bad. -Misty's face anim needs edited so that the eyebrows aren't so high. -They could've used XBOX Claude hair as reference, since it's higher quality than the spikes on PC. -The games are too saturated. Maybe it'd work for VC or SA, but not in III. -Ocean Drive could really benefit from some grass. It looks weird with just the palms. THE UGLY: -FIrst and foremost, a shoutout to all the mods that Take2 took down since last summer, and especially: re3, reVC, reLCS, GTA Underground, GTA Liberty City, GTA State Of Liberty, Miami Vibe and Vice Cry. You won't be forgotten, not by a long shot. -The whole remaster is done not by Ruffian, but by Grove Street Games, also known as War Drum, which were responsible for the disastrous version of SA that found its way on Mobile, PS3 and X360 (subsequently XBOne and Series S/X). Granted III/VC mobile looked okay but they didn't get many additions, as they mainly were PC games with XBOX assets slapped on. -VERY high chance that the radios will be butchered. Their ports also had terrible sound quality, which I hope it isn't the case here. -The "changes for a modern audience" should never exist in a GTA game. This includes Phil's confederate shirt (and very likely the confederate flag found in his trailer) and whatever else they might change (right now what I'm thinking of is that one Love Fist mission with the crazy fan and G-Spotlight ending). Whoever thought this was a good idea should be fired immediately. -SA, like usual, is the worst of all three. It got the short end of the stick in terms of development, with all characters looking outright bad and CJ not being on the same level of detail compared to Claude or Tommy, outside specific clothing elements. His default pants are literally identical to the ones in the default game, just with an upscaled texture. The cars in SA also look the same as they do on PC, eventually having some turbosmoothing slapped on. The AK didn't have any detail in a screenshot, and the map doesn't look that changed compared to III or VC. They should've delayed both for their respective 20th Anniversaries, to have more development time. -The Sims: San Andreas -Tommy has hotdog arms in some scenes. I think it could be fixed with a few tweaks. His shirt also could use a few tweaks to the part around the arms. I will not buy this anytime soon. Especially not after what they did to modders. Maybe when it gets a HUGE discount, but right now I don't think it's worth $60.

I've received more clarification and turns out I was wrong about what I initially said about Grove Street Games. They are indeed contributing largely to the development process. But, Rockstar Dundee and other Rockstar studios are also involved. The leading developers are both Rockstar Dundee and Grove Street Games, but other Rockstar studios have significantly assisted with the development too. Rockstar Dundee was an external studio before the acquisition. Back in 2019, Rockstar must have collaborated with these two external studios, Ruffian Games & Grove Street Games, to lead the development, but the former ended up being acquired by Rockstar.

So after further looking into these, and to prove I'm not a hater because that's all anyone gets called if you're even slightly negative these days, here's what's best and worst IMO: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Interiors (the amount of added detail, corrected lighting indoors and clean up done shown in SA has been very impressive) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Map (Map detail itself more so in III and VC looks vastly improved, neons and signage are now modelled, etc, overall giving it a nice bump whilst remaining faithful) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Generics (The foliage is great if a little too different in some areas BUT here's where the bad starts to creep in, some things, more so in SA, look badly textured and rushed compared to the originals) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Vehicles (Again, a mixed bag, you've got vehicles that have had attention to detail poured into them, such as the Banshee, and then for others you've got this odd mix of PC and Xbox vehicles being used, just smoothed out, this is obvious in VC where vehicles have their Xbox license plates and don't show much improvement) >>>>>>>>>> Weapons (More bad than good so far, bad scaling, awkward QA, you've got Tommy with a giant but detailed Uzi and then CJ holding a cardboard box AK-47, things need to be improved here) >>> Character Models (I'm not sure if it's just the shader or just design choice in general, but characters look more like plastic dolls now, or as most point out, Fortnite styled, this is not what I want in GTA and I've seen MANY fan made mods over the years that have done these characters a lot better)

Let's put this meme to sleep Staff edit: split into new topic just like the old GTA V Screenshot Fun

At the very least FaceApp managed to make them look a bit more cheerful, so there's that

Differences in the Skimmer flying scene: Before: After: Lighting and explosion effects (reflections too) are vastly different now: Before: After:

The amount of inaccuracies and their inability to preserve the original atmosphere is hilarious. They completely screwed it up...

The outrage is downright comical, with some people being so dramatic as to claim that they have ruined the franchise simply because Claude's skin looks a bit more yellow (when illuminated by a yellow lamppost). It is so pessimistic and dramatic in nature that it makes me question exactly who the people complaining so much are. Are they middle schoolers? They surely reacted like ones. Now it's perfectly fine to have gripes and criticisms about the remasters, but as anything goes, that would be within the realm of logic. Would it have been fair to say Blade Runner 2046 was a complete garbage, unredeemable movie just because it was a little more colorful than the original? Is it fair to call Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition sh*t because it doesn't have ray tracing despite being well over 20 years old? I don't think so, I think this specific group of people I'm referring to are taking ONE legitimate criticism and blowing it out of proportion so that it engulfs the entire discourse and frames the entire Trilogy as a failure, going as far as to doxx the developers and throwing a hissy fit over the sole fact that they supposedly developed the mobile ports. LEGITIMATE CRITICISMS Obviously, I'm not saying the remasters aren't without faults. The characters do look a bit cartoony and could've benefited from different art direction, but that seems to mostly depend on the game, as I personally believe San Andreas is fine in that regard, for the most part. Still, the characters don't look that much more cartoony than they did in the original games, and anyone thinking so likely hasn't removed their nostalgia tinted glasses. There don't really seem to be many props in Ocean Drive in Vice City, which makes me somewhat worry that they haven't added much to the emptier areas of the game, but then again, that would be in line with the map design of the older games, and it's not like they took anything out. Questionable choice, I guess, but overall not much of a big deal. Some textures look low res. This is a weird one because most of the textures seem to be HD, but one particular texture that caught my attention was CJ's jeans. For some reason the texture looks worse than most others in the game. There are other minor issues like hand rigging on weapon models and other various visual bugs seen in screenshots and whatnot, but all in all they are rather minor and will be likely unnoticeable during gameplay, and hopefully might even be fixed by release. I think the biggest culprit of all is the 60 dollar pricepoint. I'd say 40 dollars is more appropriate. We've already played those games and while the new graphics and controls are welcome additions, I don't think they're worth 15 dollars on top of the 5 dollars you would normally pay for a game key for one original game from the trilogy. There are some questionable decisions involved in the creation of this remaster, but in no way do they all warrant the degree of outrage it's seen by some people. You think Vice City is ruined because Tommy looks a little weird? Nothing short of a temper tantrum I'd say. UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS Scouring internet forums and Discord chats, it becomes abundantly clear that people have no clue what the word "remaster" means, using it interchangeably with the word "remake". All a remaster is supposed to be is a port to newer consoles with QoL changes in the controls department and small graphical enhancements like upscaled textures and HD resolution support. RARELY are there any remasters where the game has a completely new lighting system and completely new shaders. In the case where they happen, it's considered a big deal, and in case you want to see how rare it is for that to happen, check out this Wikipedia page lol. If you want some examples of what the average remaster looks like, I'll give you some. Resident Evil 4: Call of Duty Modern Warfare: Assassin's Creed II: Gears of War: Age of Empires II Dark Souls: As you see, these remasters' changes range from slightly better textures and resolution to lighting changes at most. That doesn't mean that they are bad remasters per se, but that they do their intented job, which, as previously stated, is only to port the game to newer systems with updated control schemes, HD support and other minor eye candy. It is NOT a remaster's job to completely overhaul a game's rendering pipeline complete with new shaders and effects such as ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing, anistropic filtering, bloom, screen-space reflections, ambient fog, tessellation, volumetric clouds and particles AND shadow mapping. People who downplay the weight of these VERY noticeable changes in the trailers are missing the point of what a remaster is supposed to be and very clearly don't understand what effects end up making a game's graphics good. Now that you've seen what an average, serviceable remaster looks like, let's take a look at the oh-so-outrageous remaster created by Grove Street Games and how it absolutely does not live up to expectations set by the industry. Considering that Rockstar NEVER advertised this as anything more than a remaster with some upgraded controls and lighting, and the industry standard for a remaster, they actually went above and beyond the traditional definition to bring consumers a more polished experience. The main criticism aimed at these changes is that the characters look "too plastic" and "too cartoony". For one, I believe that San Andreas cut scenes look as good as the ones from GTA 4, if not better in some instances. GTA 3 and Vice City have less noticeable improvements, but bad? No way. If anything, people are complaining that the art direction concerning the character design isn't what they expected, despite the fact that THIS is what the older games used to look like: Right. Not a sliver of cartoony in these screenshots. The pinnacle of realistic, gritty art direction. Sarcasm aside, you can say that they were going for a pseudo-realistic style with these games given by the amount of pixels they tried to cram into these skins, but you can NOT maintain the classic look of these games by remaking the skins as if they were to fit in GTA 5. Rockstar advertised the remaster as something that would elevate it while trying to be authentic to the originals. Did they do an ideal job at it? No, but it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination. People have been playing these games with the horrible 128x128 textures for 20 years and praising them as masterpieces, you're telling me now that because the characters look a little brighter and smoother that your experience will be ruined? Sounds stupid if you ask me. I've seen people outraged over THIS screenshot as well! Really, I don't get to see the issue! Is his skin too human-like and alive for the purists? Are they surprised that his face actually reflects light now and looks yellow when illuminated by a yellow streetlight? I mean Niko Bellic used to look like this for f*ck's sake If you ask me, the so-controversial screenshot of Claude doesn't look like it would be too far from an in-game model from GTA 4. What's all this outrage about? In my opinion, it's because they dared to make the games look too bright, as the community GUSHES over this edited version of a cut scene: Seems to me that if they turned the saturation slider way down and increased some contrast then people would have absolutely no qualms with these trailers, lol. Now it's fine to think the saturation should be lower in general, but to claim that these games were totally RUINED because of this?? That's another story. All in all, I think they did a fine job adapting these games, minus some oversights and somewhat questionable art direction, but absolutely NOTHING to warrant this level of outrage. "MODS ARE BETTER" Another recurring statement thrown around to discredit the remasters. There are so many issues with this I don't even know where to begin. First of all, the modding scene for GTA is incredible, especially for San Andreas. San Andreas modders have been insanely dedicated to the game for almost 20 years, managing to create some stunning mods in the process. To mention some famous ones, ENB Series, RenderHook, RoSA, ViceCry and others have done a great job at upgrading some aspects of the game. DirectX 3.0, a collection of ENB shaders developed for San Andreas, looks awesome in screenshots: It adds many modern effects and graphical enhancements to RenderWare, and it looks great, making the game look more realistic, but that's NOT what Rockstar intended for the remasters, and that's not what should be expected of them. That's like saying that Fortnite looks worse than San Andreas with mods because one has a more realistic approach to art direction than the other, but you CAN'T condemn Fortnite for being more cartoony because that's the look it's going for. If the remasters were trying to look more realistic and ended up looking like GTA 4, then that would've been awful, but as it stands, what Rockstar wanted was a game that preserved the original aesthetic of the trilogy, and that's more or less what was delivered, albeit with better models and textures. To complain that the remasters can't outdo the graphical level of ENB Series or RenderHook is to downplay the skill, knowledge and passion of the creators bringing you these mods. People say the remasters are just ports with stolen mods, but DirectX 3.0 isn't some low level garbage that's easily outdone, it's a work with countless hours of passion put into it and a serious display of technical knowledge regarding computer graphics worthy of a professional, and its shaders are simply just standard in modern game development. If GTA 6 comes out tomorrow and has car reflections and god rays has it stolen from DX 3.0? No, that's simply expected of modern day videogames, and it would be also expected of a modern day remaster of the original trilogy. While being technically impressive, DirectX 3.0 isn't revolutionary in what it does, as it simply updates RenderWare with industry standard graphical shaders. Is it GSG's fault that modders are so good that they can bring professional-level enhancements to RenderWare? If anything, that's just a testament of how dedicated the community is. There are VERY FEW mod communities in the videogame world as dedicated as that of GTA. With that said, mods like this don't completely lack issues. People seem to think that San Andreas with graphics mods is some flawless, seamless experience, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. In screenshots, the game looks pretty, sure, but when you're actually playing the game, it's a completely different story. I've been modding San Andreas for close to 10 years of my life. I know a few things about modding, and let my tell you, finding a decent way to play San Andreas with graphics mods was absolutely nerve-wracking. You have only two mods to greatly enhance the graphics: RenderHook and ENBSeries. RenderHook, while relatively well-optimized, is still under development and suffers from many hiatuses. I think the last build of RenderHook compatible with SA dates to over a year ago. Secondly, the builds that are available feature an annoying amount of visual bugs, both relating to the mod itself and RenderWare. ENBSeries, meanwhile, barely works. Many older builds will straight up prevent your game from booting up, while the latest version doesn't work properly. Try to install ENBSeries and you'll have to go through hoops and sh*t just to get the game to boot up, and then most of the effects, for some reason, won't work, and the ones that do, like dynamic shadows, completely TANK your FPS. Setting up graphics mods for San Andreas is NOT a user-friendly experience, it will have you go through tons of trouble-shooting and mix and matching .dll's to get your game to run properly, and when it does, the 20 to 30 FPS clean shaven off your game will hardly be worth the improvements, considering that the game will suffer from HORRENDOUS pop-in and LOD flickering due to the removal of distance fog and other effects that mask the horrible draw distance of the older titles. Like I said, in screenshots these mods look pretty (they're just screenshots after all), but in-game it's revealed that RenderWare struggles with these new shaders like a mule trying to drag about a semi and getting an anal prolapse in the process. Have a look: https://youtu.be/AzZWN-6Rqus?t=54 https://youtu.be/2xmCjLsElYA?t=82 So while these mods are impressive and a great testament to the skill of their developers, they're not very practical while playing the game as they highlight a plethora of issues which turn out to be a complete turn-off. What good is a shiny car shader if I can't drive twenty feet without a tree materializing in front of me and a billboard having a seizure in the background? And if you want to further fix these issues, you'll have to tinker with other mods like 2dfx and the likes which, unfortunately, completely f*ck your FPS and are in turn incompatible with other mods. Graphics mods do NOT offer a smooth and polished experience, and if the people claiming that the remaster looks worse than modded really care about detail as much as they say they do, they would realise that all the little bullsh*t bugs and issues exacerbated by these graphics mods, on top of all the troubleshooting and performance issues, would not be worth it. The biggest issue with this narrative that mods are somehow better is that no regular person will go through all this sh*t just to have a few more shaders in RenderWare. Seriously, people fail to see how not user-friendly these mods are from a consumer standpoint. First of all, San Andreas is the only game of the trilogy that has good gfx mod support. Graphics mods for Vice City and III are more limited and present just as many issues. There is absolutely NO WAY to make III look as good as it did in the remastered trailer with mods, not even using RenderHook. Secondly, like I said, no average Joe who plays Call of Duty is going to go through the trouble of going on sketchy sites like GTAInside which try to install mods onto your game with their custom installer which will litter your pc with adware to install graphics mods that will tank the game's performance. And lastly, has everyone forgotten about consoles? Are people expected to jailbreak their PS4 to mod their game with graphics mods and likely completely break their game in the process as these mods require certain .dlls and other runtime libraries to even let the game boot up? This notion that Rockstar was somehow lazy and that modders could do a better job is completely retarded. Not only do mods not create a better experience than an official, polished remaster, but they also cut out what represents most of the market share for these remasters, which are CONSOLE PLAYERS. THE ROCKSTAR GAMES HATEBONER & THE INDUSTRY The previous paragraph enunciates a recurring idea that Rockstar Games have become a lazy, greedy game studio incapable of creating quality products. Every time any news regarding a Rockstar Games production comes out, a good amount of people will bash the studio saying "keep your expectations low". The problem with this is that time and time again, with every new game release, Rockstar has set THE standard for detail. GTA 5 STILL competes with games released nowadays, and it was released close to 8 years ago. Red Dead Redemption 2 was released only two years ago and was the fastest selling piece of media ever created and set yet another standard for open world games with an unprecedented level of detail, but somehow people seem to forget that. Because of GTA Online. People don't seem to understand the difference between game studio and publisher. When a game ends up being a microtransaction-ridden piece of sh*t, that is the publisher's fault. No game studio wants its game to be seen as a simple cash grab, as game studios are the real creators behind a game, they are developers that have a passion for videogames who wanted to make a living out of it, no sane person would ruin a work of art with greedy monetization tactics. The ones involved in those practices are the publishers, because they need to recoup their investment in PUBLISHING the games developed by these studios and satisfying share holders in their earnings reports. To that purpose, Take Two started pushing Rockstar to create ghastly counterparts of their superb singleplayer experiences solely aimed at aggressive monetization, being GTA Online and RDR Online, but the sole existence of those titles does not invalidate the existence of their singleplayer counterparts. For some reason, though, people seem to have forgotten those exist! When people talk about GTA 5, for some obscure reason, they only refer to GTA Online and not the singleplayer game. GTA Online doesn't exist to me, it's not equivalent to GTA 5 and I'll never play it. Rockstar hasn't had some incredible decline in quality throughout the years. Their last release was incredible, the PUBLISHERS and PARENT COMPANIES are to blame for the clusterf*ck of greed that are GTA Online and GTA 5's release schedule. Unfortunately, these practices have become standard in the industry and have disgruntled gamers, rightfully so, but I've noticed it's also turned a lot of them into unbearable pessimists who sh*t on everything because they feel some sense of accomplishment from their "X franchise is dead they don't care anymore" doomsday predictions. The state of the videogame industry kind of sucks, but there's nuance to it. The presence of greedy publishers does not rule out the existence of competent game developers which can deliver quality products. The existence of GTA Online does not mean that Read Ded Redemption 2 is somehow comparable to Cyperpunk 2077. People just like to hop on the bandwagon and be outraged to get their rocks off, and that's even more evidenced by the incredible reactions of some people. THE VOCAL MINORITY A poll on this forum reveals that most people actually liked the trailer, with only 10-15% of people hating it. This was to be expected, as no regular, sane person would have a complete spergfest over the fact that Claude doesn't look like a real life replica of Tom Cruise in a remaster of a 20 year old videogame. It just highlights how absurd and ridiculous this level of outrage is. I mean come on, Rockstar didn't even announce they were going to release these remasters until like 3 weeks before the trailers, they were supposed to pretty much come out of nowhere, except that people started leaking documents and some set their expectations too high, not knowing what the word "remaster" means. It was never supposed to be some incredible hyped release, it was never supposed to be a complete remake with GTA 5 level graphics, it was supposed to be a fine remaster which would bring some new graphical features and QoL changes to newer platforms, and to that end I think they succeeded. It makes me wonder what exactly were people thinking when they found out about these remasters, what sort of wild insurmountable expectations they set for this release that the reaction they had was to throw slurs at a group of 20 developers. This outrage is simply idiotic, pointless, and disingenuous. It downplays the merits of the remasters while shifting goalposts and placing unrealistic expectations onto regular consumers. tl;dr the remasters aren't peak perfection but they look fine, and if you throw an autistic spergfest over how they ABSOLUTELY RUINED the original games you come off as a middle schooler.

At the end of the day, whoever made this project does not really matter. (GSG, Dundee, Ubisoft, EA) You know who the publisher is: Rockstar & Take-Two. Even if R* did have a hand on this remaster, remake, rework or whatever you want to call it, they (Rockstar Games) were the ones who approved it. Why did they approve chubby Tommy, soap Kendl, Sean 'Sour' Johnson? (i.e characters look sloppy) I don't know. Why did they approve some of the massive changes to Color Correction/Grading? (i.e mood is sometimes too different) I don't know. It could be anything ranging from: "We want this to be released by the anniversary, no matter if you (GSG) is capable of finishing it in time or not" to "This looks good enough to us, ship it in November". I don't know who gives the greenlight for this stuff. If it's RSG Main HQ in NYC, if it's Sam/Garbut/big devs. Whoever did it, looked at it and thought it was good enough and that's what we've got. Did the original devs who still are a Rockstar have a say in this? I don't know. Would it have mattered if they did? I don't know, R*'s main decision takers and execs could still ignore them and say "LGTM. Ship" There's only two things a sane person can do at this point: If you dislike you what see, make it count, do not buy the game. Be critical about it, but properly. Insulting others will make you look less respectable and most serious people won't bother listening to you. This includes Rockstar and anyone who worked on it. If you like what you see (entirely). Purchase the game and have fun in November 11. If you like what you see but some aspects of it throw you off. Re-consider your purchase. If you end up purchasing or not, be critical about it, but just like I said before: Be reasonable. I think most of this looks good. Rockstar's mistake was to: Once again deliver terrible communication (newswire article reads bad imo, sounds clinical) Greenlight the overall project when there are things that don't look proper. Instead of delaying it so characters look decent, so color correction isn't as off, so there is more consistency in vehicle models, weapons... I honestly don't think they will learn it "the easy way". They will only "learn" if they "get hit by a truck" like Starbreeze/Overkill did when they made a huge fiasco with Payday 2 MTX. Even so, that was on them (OVK) being able to recognize the problems and listen to the community. If you check their most recent documentary about Payday's Anniversary the difference between the two companies when it comes to PR and Community stuff is Night and Day. The silent treatment doesn't work anymore, not nowadays in Social Media land and is borderline disrespectful. It just makes it seem like they don't give a sh*t. Is it going to change? I don't think so. They get away with almost literally everything just because of the sheer size of the fanbase and how little, things like E&E and "here and there" mistakes on Trilogy, will relatively hurt them financially. (The cost of E&E was probably marginal in comparison to Trilogy, E&E got a massive backlash, Trilogy DE is mostly fine) Put the blame on whoever you want, "zoomers", "nerds", " "idiots" who swallow up everything". At the end of the day, it's Rockstar approving all of that and saying: "Yeah, LGTM. Ship it." Financial support does hurt but for a company this large it takes way more than that. Remember that one of their main ways of making money is GTAO Shark Cards from whale spenders.

Average Vice City DE enjoyer

Controversial opinion by Claude, may get cancelled:

I color matched the top one to the bottom one in photoshop and got this. Kinda neat!

I just don't understand why they saturated the models so much

The differences between the remasters and the originals are just day and night. I just can't stop comparing them. If you think these are lazy remasters then you're delusional. I can see a lot of passion and effort went into these remasters. Well done to everyone who worked on this - I am seriously impressed with the new changes

I find it weird that so many of you can only think in black and white. For the lot of you a game either looks like this: Or this: Guys here is a perfectly fine line between the two where the characters look good and the graphics aren't any better (but not much worse if worse at all) than what we saw in the trailer. You guys should stop thinking in the two dimensional world of '8K VERY HIGH SETTINGS ULTRA HIGH GRAPHICS' and 'Fortnite' because it's getting really boring. There are other ways to handle this. Just because someone didn't expect play-doh characters it doesn't mean they expected RDR 2 graphics. Maybe they expected something like the picture above. Probably another R* project. They have never touched this.

If people hated it why did they beg modders for years to try and restore the effects and style to the pc version? There seems to be some revisionist history going on at the moment and it's a little sad how everyone, including "fans", are now calling the original games trash with terrible graphics, etc, and that Rockstar have finally blessed them with a playable version of these games.

Hello dear forumers, after watching the trailer several times and after the warzone the forum was yesterday and the painful memes about fat Tommy yellowish crappy fingers i will post My thoughts about the trilogy. Before i start i just Will make a quick introduction: as a day 1 believer, and as i posted several times before the trailer release, My expectations we're high but i was not expecting a full remake or anything like that, i said in several posts that the trilogy deserved better graphics, lightning and gameplay improvements and be able to run in Windows 10, a remakster, just that for me would have been the Best scenario possible (like the old version but with some mods like : CLEO, Widescreen fix, Project 2DFX and Silentpatch) at bare minimun and start from there. I was not expecting GTA V or RDR2 graphics. I was pretty much convinced that this Project would be done at Home by Rockstar Dundee, seemed to be the most logical way since the new studio has a lots of og's from DMA Design, and You would think that a relevant Project like this and so special for Rockstar would never be outsourced, but i was wrong... First of all, like Many others and mostly og's i have strong mixed feelings, the trailer to me looked half-assed and the music choice was not good at all, i would have preferred GTA III theme song or a mix of the 3 themes. After the trailer we become screenshots, and at first glance GTA III looks slither better than VC and SA (maybe they assigned the Best intern to that city), i can see some improvements, don't get me wrong, better lightning, textures and such, but for me it is below the minimun Quality that this Project needed, i cannot see passion in this, i don't see the maximun effort, or maybe this is the maximun that this studio can do?. And oh boy, the characters, this is the most critical thing to me...what in the hell we're they thinking??? Why You change this iconic models into trash yellow sausage plastic bootleg looking a** models, seems like they choose a random intern and Say: "hey mike, wanna do the character models" ffs this is totally unacceptable, if You are not capable of deliver a good model just unglue the fingers and leave the model like that. They look so out of place, specially Tommy, Claude and cj look still Bad to me but not as Bad as Tommy, but it's gonna be hard to "get used" to this, i don't Buy this cartoonish crap, this is Grand Theft Auto not forttrash. The project not be done at Home it's very painful to me, i really thought despite T2 greed that they Will give to this Project a special threatment, like this are our 3 babies, the Games that established Rockstar as a serious name in the Game industry, makes You wonder, what in the hell they bought ruffian, what for??, We still don't know but seems like they have 0% involvement on this and instead they decided to outsource this Project to a below average studio with some shady past in GTA Games (You know the one), to me this decisión is a sad statement, in the end seems more like a rushed cash grab than a passionate Project. Iam still trying To process all of this, but those are My Main thoughts, Iam still dying to play GTA III again, but to pre-order i need in Game footage, My only hope for this Game to gather My interest is if they make changes to the character models (wich seems unlikely but possible) and again i need see some Solid gameplay before decide. Sorry for long post but i needed unload this from My chest...if You read all of this thanks You. @VitoCorleone1992 Iam listening to this song in a loop in My dark room trying To forget yellow sausage plastic bootleg looking Tommy @Zello iam not in heaven

Anyways I hate how VC looks like a 3D version of the sims , fortnite or a bad mobile gta copycat

A lot of differences in the starting scene: Before: After: Differences in the cop chase scene: Before: After:

Lighting and explosion effects (reflections too) are vastly different now: Before: After:

No, Sonny. I don't have the money, I spent it all on McDonald's.

To add more to my old post, these are official stuff. This is what a fan could do in his spare time. Which in turn are based on the originals, complete with their skin details. So no, they didn't really look "cartoony", as they clearly had details that the new version skimped over. Same thing in VC, with Ken. Missing details that the original model had. I seriously doubt you need an AAA company to draw a few highlights and facial details and make proper suit lines that don't look like they were done in Paint. And you clearly don't need to start a remake to make them look decent, considering they touched pretty much everything minus the code part. And even without comparing models, there is bad parts, like the tanktop on this Grove member. The white lines look outright bad with the white pixels being way too visible, as if they were done in paint, and not by mesh.

I'll say one thing which I think would've been better. They should've staggered out the release. It's clear that GTA3 got the most improvements where as VC and SA have more questionable choices style wise. Instead of dropping them all at once I think a 6-9 month window between them would work, gives extra time for VC and SA to get additional work done to them.

Ah yes, buying their product. That'll show em.

Here is your new Phil Cassidy, thanks to War Drum Studios he is not a violent redneck anymore ;^)

I think a lot of sentiment could change when people actually get their hands on it and get lost in the worlds themselves. For those who were "purists" to begin with, or frustrated by other events (E&E, modding), the way it looks is too jarring. So many people have already written it off at the thought of losing music too. The other side accept it for a big improvement on what the originals were intended to look like, and I've already read lots of comments (here and elsewhere) where people are actually warming to it because they've actually looked deeper at the changes and adjustments. Once you get in game, and that nostalgia starts to seep back into your veins, people might actually to prefer it to the classics, and that's OK.

Whatever the question you make the answer will be They were supposed to be cartoonish, what were you expecting?

Yeah, because everyone knows you can't have a hobby unless you do it for a living, right? f*ck off with that BS, what an incredibly toxic viewpoint. Rockstar isn't gonna give you a free trilogy game code for posting this stuff, sorry to say. Feel free to keep defending their incredibly morally wrong decisions for absolutely nothing in return, though.

Ok, so, let's try to not go full ape rage bcz, there's some ups and downs in the trilogy, ok? There's worst things to worry, despite most of us probably live in 1st world countries and usually don't have nothing of that important to bitch about, so we strike upon this sh*t. Lol! But jokes aside, let's see. I toke some prints and this is my conclusions: What' i've to say of wrong here, is the neckband of Joey's outift, could be use a bit more of volumetry, don't it? Also, Misty's spike hair here, is one of the things that turns me down the most in the "no's" of the graphics, is similar to Claude's hair. Also, face it's not so pretty or juvenile like it was in the original. Still, nice tits though, nice polisment there. The environment looks absolutely stunning, we got clouds at least similar to GTA V i think. The no's here are the freaking train is going out of the track! Not respecting the track curve that the train should also have done. Another no is that i believe that the cars will be something less developed here...looks like there's the basically same rigid lines, rectangules, etc. Again, i will not tell how good it went from the previous, bcz here and as people already noticed, this was R* trying to be cocky. They used a maybe near the lowest resolution possible to show this pciture, but nonethless we have then the new one and Ocean Drive looks very beautiful. You can see that they put more palm trees and better foliage, better neon lightning in the buildings, more street lamps, more textures overall and the environment is more shinny like it should be in Miami. But looks like the sizes of npc-vehicle are going still be disporpotional in some cases like they were back then. Nice colour scheme here, the streets of Las Venturas are move lived and we can clear see here and i don't think that people already noticed, we have probably GTA V sky's template. A sky full of stars. Remember when the old gta's had live 3 or 4 stars and a moon so out of proportions? So, a positive point here. Maybe one of the best shots. So pretty. See how much the rain looks realistic. How the lights of the cars are reflecting on the ground. How the mirros are much better shaped, see the reflection of traffic lights in Calude's car and reflections on npc's from the highligths of the cars. Well...Avery's face looks odd and totally different. Maybe one of the worst remakes here. But nonethless, look at the details of the light reflecting on the clothes, in Tommy's air and face...and also the t-shirt of Tommy got quite the very good textures here. You can see even the stitches. Well, nothing to say here, just read what i put on the pictures. I think what of the best improvements are indeed in the foliage of the trees, grass, nature...i will enjoy go for a walk in the hoods and get all goosebumps when the forest will feel creepy as f*ck. But, i can't not notice that i think the Cj's belt and pants haven't been that much improved, lucks like the original, with old some better illumination there. But, take a look at the rear light of the ZR-350, you can see the reflections, but in the other hand, i feel it's a bit ood how "into to the inside" the wheel are from the car's body. Yeeeah...Kendl looks quite weird, it feels like it's from other game artwork...don't mind the skin colour bcz black couples can have different childrens and some skin colours being more darker or ligther than the others. But it's just that it feels quite different, but still, Kendl of the original was quite ugly and a bad model. (Sweet's face in this frame doesn't look like that good too...). But the interiors seems nice. Hope we can enter way much interiors in the 3 games. Bonus and this i will not hide on a spoiler tab (i just did with the others, bcz if not the post would become too big. This is one thing that bothers me a lot with Tommy's default outfit. It feels awkward to people and they are bragging about the arms bcz the sleeve of the t-shirt is not helping. You can see here that to me, they made a mistake in the volumetry. The sleeve of any textile when it comes to sleeves of summer clothing, are thin, and here it's too much thick, it's unrealistic. So i photoshoped it a bit on paint (so don't expect any masterpiece) but you can see how if they toke away the thickness of it, the arm would not look like's it's just attached to body like if was a prosthetic arm: And this is from a modder, and it's just something that i would like that people and R* would take into account. Bcz the "canon" now is to insert "lightning", "lightning is the answer to do realistic graphics". But it's a principle of nature that "there's no light without dark and no dark without light". In this picture you can clear see that you can see your surrondings where is light, and you can't see sh*t when there is no light, bcz it's night. And it's the way that is in real life, if you don't have any kind of light source, then what is in the dark you will not see. For instances, you can go in GTA V to the paleto forest, yet you have an unrealistic lighthing that doesn't exit in any part of the real world where there's no lamps, electricity, any kind of light. I know that probably is like that to allow you to see things and don't screw your gaming experience, but, i think that at least they could put darker tones in the environment when there's no light sources.

Cancel Culture drags people's reputation to the ground and destroys livelihoods. Mod Takedowns throws months and years of hard work out down the drain and, in worst cases, ruins livelihoods (people being sued for instance). Political correctness makes everything fake, sanitized and murders creativity. Outrage culture is just a bunch of guys complaining in a forum, at least by your definition. The three things you listed are much, much worse lmao lmfao nobody expected that, nice strawman. 2 years is way more than enough for a paid studio to just upscale a bunch of old games, especially when it comes to a multimillion dollar company like Rockstar. Even more so when you compare this to plenty of quality mods made by people in their spare time. R* could've hired these modders to work on this instead, like many companies have done, but whatever. The complaints go beyond "wanting more". Many things in the trailer look like sh*t. Particularly the character models and texturing. That wasn't a matter of time, but a matter of talent. You can't look at Tommy or Claude and tell me that they look good, or that they properly resemble their old-school counter parts, or that they're even consistent with the artsyle of the games. Because they f*cking don't. They barely even have textures in their skin, it looks like someone painted them with the MS Paint bucket. It looks like a modded game made by someone with no sense of aesthetic. Even if you like it, you simply can't deny that they don't have the same feel of the original games. Liberty City's atmosphere is completely ruined, just to give another example. "GUYS I SWEAR I'M NOT A SHILL BUT DON'T YOU THINK THAT MAYBE YOU'RE ACTING A BIT TOO ENTLITED? YOU MIGHT HURT THE FEELINGS OF THE MULTIMILLION DOLLAR COMPANY BY sh*tPOSTING IN A FORUM THEY DON'T EVEN BOTHER READING" You liked the trailer, that's fine. Most people do. Good for you. We don't. Hence the B&M thread. We can disagree or we can fling sh*t at each other. Yes, GTA fans sometimes whine about menial sh*t, but you seriously can't deny why this trailer looks jarring for a lot of people.

What the hell, why are there people trying to simp for Rockstar in a Bitch and Moan thread? There's the other main thread if you people really wanna play GTA Fortnite in 2 weeks or whatever, stop bustin' our balls, we're just tryna vent here and not there for a reason, Jesus.

DE look better in most cases.

Can’t help but be reminded of this after seeing the trailer and screenshots.

The real remaster

People are so starved for something new from Rockstar they are doing mental gymnastics to defend this It's pretty sad honestly. Everyone was desperate for something good after the E and E disappointment. Now they are trying to convince themselves it looks great..."Oh hey I think it's growing on me bro", "Stop being entitled bro" And I won't be surprised if these versions are filled with bugs and glitches.

Why is everyone saying this again and again when it's obviously not true? Can you show me a game from 2001 or 2002 that was developed for the PS2 first and foremost and looked photorealistic? No. Can you show me any that looked as good as possible? Yes. GTA isn't one of them but they were never meant to look cartoonish either. They were limited in their beauty but they never meant to be a Disney animation. Look at the alpha version of GTA III and compare it with what we got. I think you can see how it went from a cartoonish game to a more serious one. And this seriousness is what R* adopted in the later games. This is cartoonish. This is much less so. I don't deny that the blocky bodies make the characters look a bit goofy but overall it is barely cartoonish.

This is a strangely hostile attitude to enter the thread with ngl

Unrealistc ≠ cartoony GTA Vice City looked unrealistic and a bit cartoony, yes but way less cartoony than the now remastered one. Another disingenuous comparison Original: "Remastered" shiny Playdough-Sims version. Notice the difference in skin tone:

Please fam, don't bother wasting your time on this one. It's just another attention seeking troll.

Everything looks great except for the character models. Environment, cars, buildings, lightnings, weather etc look impressive. But character models look like plastic dolls.

Mate, you are the only one bringing the 'outrage culture' here. As a matter of fact, by using that phrase you wanted to demean opinions shared in this thread, don't pretend it's the contrary. Most of the peps here didn't call for blood or have they undertaken any similar actions that would even barely resemble what you describe as such. As you've said it yourself, this is ' bitch and moan ' thread after all, I see no reason to apologize for doing exactly that. If you see it as 'outrage', fine, but no need to be demeaning by such harsh classifications.