Ignored GTA III Lore

[sneakyboi23334]

In the GTA III section of Rockstar's official website, there is a lot of information that later got thrown out the window in the later games.

https://www.rockstargames.com/grandtheftauto3/flash/main.html

 

• It says the Forellis used to work for the Leone family, but have recently been trying to rise in power. In GTA Vice City, it is revealed that they have existed since at least 1971, and in GTA Liberty City Stories (which is set in 1998) they are still an independent faction, unlikely to work for the Leones in the next 3 years.
• It says that Asuka Kasen moved to Liberty City in 1991, and Kenji in 1996. But in the GTA Liberty City Stories section, Kazuki sends an e-mail to Kenji talking about how things must be in home (Japan) and wishes that he and Asuka were there for him, suggesting they are both in Japan in 1998.
• This Liberty Tree article cheerily announces that Donald Love is coming to Liberty City as if it's a brand new thing that has never happened before, and that he is "an American legend who has changed laws, opened casinos and cleared slums across America" but in GTA Liberty City Stories, Donald resides in Liberty City in 1998, he did leave at the end of the game but did he do all that legend crap in the three years he left?! Rockstar tried to make this consistent with continuity by adding an e-mail sent to Ned Burner that complains about how Donald Love keeps moving in and out of the city and that he should make up his mind, but it really doesn't sit well with the article.
• Another article says the LCPD only recently bought a fleet of helicopters, even though in LCS (set in 1998) they already have and use helicopters.

These are only some of the things I found, try digging in yourself and you might find even more inconsistent things. Why were these simply ignored by Rockstar in future releases? Did they just forget about them? Did they think no one would care since there is nearly no people who read these things? Whatever it was, they messed it up.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Hendrik498

[H-G]

2 hours ago, Hendrik498 said:

It says that Asuka Kasen moved to Liberty City in 1991, and Kenji in 1996. But in the GTA Liberty City Stories section, Kazuki sends an e-mail to Kenji talking about how things must be in home (Japan) and that he wishes Asuka and here were there for him, suggesting they are both in Japan in 1998.

Well, Asuka moved to LC in 1991 and Kenji moved to LC in 1996 but LCS takes place in 1998, so maybe they moved back to Japan one or two years before the events of LCS.

 

EDIT:

 

And yeah, R* really messed up the lore. These are the biggest continuity holes I've seen.

But hey, we're all humans, ain't we? And we are called humans because we make mistakes.

Edited June 12, 2018 by The Eddo

[Inadequate]

Since GTA III was and is the first one in revolution completely the graphics to 3D, it seems that Rockstar wanted realistic and sense things so is normal they put that information there and get forget from it too. Vice City for instance didn't exist yet at the time, that is why a lot of stuff is senseless today.

[sneakyboi23334]

Well, that sounds a little strange, because they always kept the lore consistent from GTA Vice City onwards, each GTA game received extended lore in Rockstar's website, even the 2D ones, but the only one that was forgotten was of GTA III, why did they ignore GTA III but not the other GTA games?

 

Have a look at the VCPD Crime Tree, San Andreas patrol map, Ned Burner's e-mails and MeTV News, and you'll see they never ignore each other, but they all ignore GTA III. Why's that?

Edited June 12, 2018 by Hendrik498

[Helegad]

My money's on "forgotten about", not "ignored", whether deliberate or not. Story became much more important in the later games, III is just a colourful gangster story, working for various bosses with little subplots under the overall arc of a revenge tale (though somewhat rarely referred to in the first two "acts"). Claude literally stumbled on Catalina and Miguel at the construction site, he was after the package, not her. Way to shoehorn the revenge plot back in to move toward the finale.

 

Anyway, it's been made pretty clear that development on III was focused more on the technology and getting Liberty City to feel alive. The writing and voice acting is decent which makes the story gel with the open world, but that could have been screwed up. Rockstar deliberately left a voiced protagonist for the sequel, which says a lot about their focus; we already know a whole heap of the game was chopped and changed so it's not surprising there's some blatantly retconned info on III's website.

[sneakyboi23334]

11 hours ago, Helegad said:

My money's on "forgotten about", not "ignored", whether deliberate or not. Story became much more important in the later games, III is just a colourful gangster story, working for various bosses with little subplots under the overall arc of a revenge tale (though somewhat rarely referred to in the first two "acts"). Claude literally stumbled on Catalina and Miguel at the construction site, he was after the package, not her. Way to shoehorn the revenge plot back in to move toward the finale.

 

Anyway, it's been made pretty clear that development on III was focused more on the technology and getting Liberty City to feel alive. The writing and voice acting is decent which makes the story gel with the open world, but that could have been screwed up. Rockstar deliberately left a voiced protagonist for the sequel, which says a lot about their focus; we already know a whole heap of the game was chopped and changed so it's not surprising there's some blatantly retconned info on III's website.

I guess you're right, that's what I thought too. So does this mean all of this information is not canon?

[Skayz]

In which section of the site can I find information about the lore of GTA III?

[sneakyboi23334]

3 hours ago, Skayz said:

In which section of the site can I find information about the lore of GTA III?

https://www.rockstargames.com/grandtheftauto3/flash/index.html

Here, there's lore for not only GTA III, but for all GTA games, even the 2D ones, I recommend checking them all out if you have the time.

[Rhoda]

I think a part of the problem stems from oversights, and less about poor planning. We aren't certain of whether R* had plans to return to Liberty City as far back as III, but I think it's safe to assume they hadn't factored in LCS. A lot of the lore and jokes mentioned were likely one-shot deals, and by means of expanding the series, inconsistencies appeared. We could argue that the official information we see on the website is hearsay, and is bound to be at least a little inaccurate based on how little we know about some of the characters. Newspapers inflate and exaggerate stories for a sale all the time, and this couldn't be more true for the news bulletins heard and seen through-out the entire franchise.

 

However, the much more likely scenario is they didn't want to be limited by outdated information from years prior, and decided to go with a slightly retconned version to avoid being pigeonholed. As said, the lore since has been mostly consistent, if a little convenient, but that's strictly fan service.

[Skayz]

1 hour ago, Hendrik498 said:

https://www.rockstargames.com/grandtheftauto3/flash/index.html

 Here, there's lore for not only GTA III, but for all GTA games, even the 2D ones, I recommend checking them all out if you have the time.

Thanks!

Edited June 14, 2018 by Skayz

[stef_92]

On 6/14/2018 at 12:35 AM, Hendrik498 said:

I guess you're right, that's what I thought too. So does this mean all of this information is not canon?

Everything which is in the games or officially mentioned by R* in some way should be considered cannon. And yet I'm still not sure if this js the true definition of 'cannon'.

[Rhoda]

Everything that is included in the game is to be considered canon, as it was deliberately put there to contribute to the overall story or to build on an existing world. The problem arises when you notice conflicts or contradictions, and this only grows when they aren't specifically addressed. In this case, you could develop your own canon because information doesn't match and suggests that at least one (or both) of these sources is wrong.

 

In this case, you could argue both sources were misinformed. Taking Asuka, she is a criminal and a mysterious individual. It isn't out of the realms of possibility that Liberty Tree printed the wrong information, adding to the allure and showcasing just how wrong the media can be sometimes.

[sneakyboi23334]

3 minutes ago, ∴ said:

Everything that is included in the game is to be considered canon, as it was deliberately put there to contribute to the overall story or to build on an existing world. The problem arises when you notice conflicts or contradictions, and this only grows when they aren't specifically addressed. In this case, you could develop your own canon because information doesn't match and suggests that at least one (or both) of these sources is wrong.

 

In this case, you could argue both sources were misinformed. Taking Asuka, she is a criminal and a mysterious individual. It isn't out of the realms of possibility that Liberty Tree printed the wrong information, adding to the allure and showcasing just how wrong the media can be sometimes.

The information on Asuka comes from the police report though, not the Liberty Tree.

[sneakyboi23334]

6 hours ago, Am Shaegar said:

https://www.rockstargames.com/grandtheftauto3/flash/main.html

When I try to click to read the character's page then nothing happens. Same issue with the info page. The screens, and the map page work absolutely fine. 

Also, I wanted to check out the lore regarding GTA 2 (as hinted by the OP), but there's no mention about it either. Where is exactly the details available for GTA 2?

It's pretty outdated so I wouldn't expect it to work to its full-function.

http://www.rockstargames.com/gta2/frameset.html Here's GTA 2, but it suffers from the same problem I aforementioned.

[gts.]

Interesting stuff. I don't know if this was ignored as your thread's title suggest or if Rockstar just forgot about this totally and i mean totally.

[sneakyboi23334]

3 hours ago, gts. said:

Interesting stuff. I don't know if this was ignored as your thread's title suggest or if Rockstar just forgot about this totally and i mean totally.

Well, canonically most of this information comes from police reports and news articles written by unseen characters from the game, I guess they're not always 100% correct like ∴ said?

[gtafaninwest]

I'm guessing after the Forellis became a shadow of their former selves, they were put in servitude under the Leones for a short time. But then they tried to reestablish themselves which failed.

 

Or it could be during Prohibition, they were originally Leones but defected during that period.

[puredorian]

I understand for one that Claude survived the first shot in the bank robbery scene at intro of GTA III since it was a cutscene.

 

But Miguel surviving the shootout that happened in LCS is nonsense, not during gameplay at least. Cutscene sure, but gameplay method might be non cannon, like exploding them with a grenade, leaving to zero chance of survival.

 

Anyway I appreciate the overall distinct feel of Liberty City in 3D era, Kuruma that only exists in LC, car crusher, small things like that.

[Evil empire]

The GTA universe is fictional and marketing-related so when Rockstar thinks an element wouldn't work well or sees the players want a certain feature back they adapt their content, there's nothing surprising in it.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Evil empire

[KGBeast]

This is just flavor text type stuff intended to flesh out the world around the events of the game a little. They didn't know at the time that GTA would turn into such a huge thing with a huge interconnected story world. When they needed to make more games, it would have been very restrictive to stick to stuff hastily thought up for a tie in website years ago. This stuff was purposely ignored and changed to create better explanations and more story opportunities. It's called a retcon.