What went wrong in the development of GTA DE?

[Luis Vercetti]

I recently was watching a video on the new updates to GTA definitive edition and saw a comment mentioning that GTA definitive edition wasn't quality checked by rockstar at all, and was outsourced to Rockstar India. I went to do my own research because frankly I had no idea Rockstar India existed (I am Indian.) I couldn't find any relevance of rockstar India to GTA definitive editions development. Does anyone know the whole cycle of this game? Went wrong?

[loseruser]

I've been curious about it too but haven't bothered to do any exhaustive search to find out if any insiders have said anything about the project. Broadly searching Google just leads to others' speculations. I mostly just inferred what I took from an interview with Rich Rosado.

 

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2021/11/gta-trilogy-remaster-interview-rockstar-games

 

He bluntly states that AI upscaling wasn't fit for the task, but a necessary evil, and that you couldn't really be selective about how it was used. If you wanted to fit the art style, and have the right to call it a remaster, you couldn't just touch a handful of major models and textures players are going to see the most, you have to do them all. With the massive count of textures across the trilogy it wouldn't be possible to do it all by hand in the time they had. This is also what I think he was referring to in the closing paragraph about approaching it as "piecemeal", which to me says that too much was put on the plate at once, without much focus on the greater picture. It might sound like it's suggesting they should have done each game individually, but rather I think it means remaster the main models for all the games first, the main characters, the cars, the player homes, the lighting, shaders, etc. Do everything important first then focus on everything else as the rest of the title is forming structure. If it didn't actually happen this way that's suggesting the project was pure chaos. Definitely crunch.

 

A lot of blame was placed on Technicolor, a company in India that Rockstar has worked with in the past. Truthfully, the ending credits don't state what exact role they served on the project, and I highly disagree that they hold the majority of blame for the outcome. The head of the snake is Rockstar.

 

I wish the Definitive Editions never happened at all, or that if they were to turn back time, approach it with the respect these titles needed and deserved.

[Luis Vercetti]

2 hours ago, loseruser said:

I've been curious about it too but haven't bothered to do any exhaustive search to find out if any insiders have said anything about the project. Broadly searching Google just leads to others' speculations. I mostly just inferred what I took from an interview with Rich Rosado.

 

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2021/11/gta-trilogy-remaster-interview-rockstar-games

 

He bluntly states that AI upscaling wasn't fit for the task, but a necessary evil, and that you couldn't really be selective about how it was used. If you wanted to fit the art style, and have the right to call it a remaster, you couldn't just touch a handful of major models and textures players are going to see the most, you have to do them all. With the massive count of textures across the trilogy it wouldn't be possible to do it all by hand in the time they had. This is also what I think he was referring to in the closing paragraph about approaching it as "piecemeal", which to me says that too much was put on the plate at once, without much focus on the greater picture. It might sound like it's suggesting they should have done each game individually, but rather I think it means remaster the main models for all the games first, the main characters, the cars, the player homes, the lighting, shaders, etc. Do everything important first then focus on everything else as the rest of the title is forming structure. If it didn't actually happen this way that's suggesting the project was pure chaos. Definitely crunch.

 

A lot of blame was placed on Technicolor, a company in India that Rockstar has worked with in the past. Truthfully, the ending credits don't state what exact role they served on the project, and I highly disagree that they hold the majority of blame for the outcome. The head of the snake is Rockstar.

 

I wish the Definitive Editions never happened at all, or that if they were to turn back time, approach it with the respect these titles needed and deserved.

Thats strange, so there's no clear idea of what Technicolor did but they are being blamed? Also if I remember correctly Technicolor had something to do with cable television back in the 2010s, I don't see what they could have contributed to GTA definitive edition anyway.

 

Ok I found out Technicolor and Technicolor games are two different companies who are completely different in size, with the first being founded in 1915 and being a company that brings color to television and the other a small game development group in India. 

 

https://www.technicolorgames.com/work/grand-theft-auto-trilogy

Technicolor is responsible for apparently the majority of the work done to the games. I think now I see what the comment meant by "outsourced to India." It seems rockstar didn't really do any work themselves on it and left it all to different teams to collaborate on it. I will never understand how even after 3 years this trilogy hasn't lived up to a indie remaster of San Andreas on the unreal engine, which take two had to shut down the project because it was clearly better than definitive edition.

Edited December 7, 2024 by Luis Vercetti

[loseruser]

Rockstar India works alongside Technicolor of India and that's all I know about them. They don't claim any roles in what they did on the Definitive Edition on their website. Likely just model rigging and visual effects as they claim the same for GTAV.

 

Rockstar North outsourced the Definitive Editions to Grove Street Games, formerly known as War Drum Studios, who were responsible for the mobile ports of GTA games. They couldn't handle the PC ports and as expected they are a mess.

 

I don't recall any fan projects more prominently being shut down other than RE3, who were a team of coders remastering these games for free in their spare time by reverse-engineering the source code and distributing it for free online. They were doing this before the Definitive Edition's announcement. Take Two initialized the litigation and the project was shut down. That was the most severe blow to a fan-made project I recall.

 

The only thing these games needed were a bit of a light-touch re-working for modern operating systems and some bug fixes, no graphics overhauls or anything were necessary. RE3 was managing just that, and they were going on to do the same with Vice City, Liberty and Vice City Stories after that, presumably with San Andreas as well in mind. It's an enormous shame that this imagination was never realized with the amount of work and talent they'd already put in with what they could accomplish. These were the remasters we could have and should have been delivered and promised.

[Luis Vercetti]

2 hours ago, loseruser said:

Rockstar India works alongside Technicolor of India and that's all I know about them. They don't claim any roles in what they did on the Definitive Edition on their website. Likely just model rigging and visual effects as they claim the same for GTAV.

 

Rockstar North outsourced the Definitive Editions to Grove Street Games, formerly known as War Drum Studios, who were responsible for the mobile ports of GTA games. They couldn't handle the PC ports and as expected they are a mess.

 

I don't recall any fan projects more prominently being shut down other than RE3, who were a team of coders remastering these games for free in their spare time by reverse-engineering the source code and distributing it for free online. They were doing this before the Definitive Edition's announcement. Take Two initialized the litigation and the project was shut down. That was the most severe blow to a fan-made project I recall.

 

The only thing these games needed were a bit of a light-touch re-working for modern operating systems and some bug fixes, no graphics overhauls or anything were necessary. RE3 was managing just that, and they were going on to do the same with Vice City, Liberty and Vice City Stories after that, presumably with San Andreas as well in mind. It's an enormous shame that this imagination was never realized with the amount of work and talent they'd already put in with what they could accomplish. These were the remasters we could have and should have been delivered and promised.

It's very heartbreaking to hear how forgotten the San Andreas unreal engine remake has become since take two shut it down. It was a "mod" that was GTA San Andreas built from the ground up in unreal engine, it would have been the first time ever a classic GTA game would be properly be remade by a modder, I cannot emphasize enough how good it would have been, It seriously looked better than GTA 5 and it was so hyped, unfortunately the trailer for it got taken off of YouTube by take two a while after they ordered cease and desist on the project itself. I stills remember revisiting the video comment section to see that the mod developer saying how rockstar failed, I guess take two was so sore about it they took the trailer off entirely.

 

I found it re-uploaded thankfully:

 

[suicidehummer]

On 12/7/2024 at 11:42 PM, Luis Vercetti said:

It's very heartbreaking to hear how forgotten the San Andreas unreal engine remake has become since take two shut it down. It was a "mod" that was GTA San Andreas built from the ground up in unreal engine, it would have been the first time ever a classic GTA game would be properly be remade by a modder, I cannot emphasize enough how good it would have been, It seriously looked better than GTA 5 and it was so hyped, unfortunately the trailer for it got taken off of YouTube by take two a while after they ordered cease and desist on the project itself. I stills remember revisiting the video comment section to see that the mod developer saying how rockstar failed, I guess take two was so sore about it they took the trailer off entirely.

 

I found it re-uploaded thankfully:

 

 

Based on that video, a lot of the criticisms of TDE could be made of that remaster as well. The whole map is visible from the sky, the unique lightboxes are gone and they're just using stock UE lighting, bad looking LODs, the water looks ridiculous, etc. The only way this looks better than TDE is the textures. Cramming foliage in every square inch of the map so it's not even recognizable doesn't make something a great remaster.

Edited December 26, 2024 by suicidehummer

[Patrick10]

In the Definitive edition, everything goes wrong in principle, I think rockstar created it just to be, although I think it's beautiful to some extent, but a lot of it is just not canonical and not beautiful.

[comanche93]

(IMHO) they spent most of their money and time on lawyers who were going after mods, rather than overseeing the development process for DE, that is what