Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy Is Off To A Rocky Start

This week marks the release of "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition," Rockstar's long-awaited remakes of "GTA 3," "Vice City," and "San Andreas." But by the looks of things so far, these releases are proving to be quite a bit less "definitive" than fans were hoping. Rockstar seems to have paired the highly-anticipated collection with an accompanying collection of problems, including bugs and other unpleasant surprises that fans didn't expect.

As producer Rich Rosado confirmed with USA Today, numerous cheats that were present in the original games have been removed because they would cause more glitches. Rosado explained, "We actually had to remove a couple for technical reasons, certain things that didn't play well in the Unreal base." Rosado didn't share any insight on the possibility of the removed cheats returning, nor did he mention plans for adding different ones. As he sees it, players will still have "some fun with discovery," so he made it clear that he was "not saying [it's a] plus or minus."

In addition to the missing cheats, "GTA: The Trilogy" is down a number of songs. When Rockstar first revealed the "full" track-list for "GTA: The Trilogy," it seemed as though the developer had broken its promise of "no new changes" to the track-list from the 2014 re-releases of the games (per PC Gamer), and that nearly 40 songs had been omitted from in-game radio playlists. VGC was later able to confirm that many of those songs are still in the game, but not before Rockstar's original list raised the ire of gamers hoping to hear all of their favorite tunes.

As for the tunes that were actually left out? Well, that's a funny story on its own.

Not long after "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy' launched, the whole package was removed from Rockstar's PC storefronts around the same time the Rockstar Games Launcher reportedly went down (per IGN), rendering the title unplayable even for people who had already purchased it. And although the official Rockstar Support Twitter account blamed the entire issue on the Rockstar Games Launcher needing "maintenance," data miners seem to have found another possible reason for the game's unavailability.

Fans are finding a lot of stuff in the game's files that they weren't meant to. "GTA" YouTuber Vadim M has found "basically the Holy grail [of] 'behind the scene' stuff," including internal memos from Rockstar North. Meanwhile, Twitter user @Ash_735 discovered that all of the songs that was "cut" from "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" was actually still present in the game's files; they'd just been rendered unplayable. This has led some fans to believe that a simple mod could make the songs playable, which could be a legal issue that Rockstar would want to avoid. Fans probably shouldn't be surprised if these songs and other unintended files have been excised by the time the game is back in PC storefronts.

But fans who are disappointed by the sounds of "GTA: The Trilogy" will likely be even more unsettled by some of its sights.

The real kicker with "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy" has to be the graphical issues. One player shared multiple photos on Twitter of misshapen, messed-up character models, citing "really weird character rigging" and declaring the game "glitchy as all hell." Other gamers shared similar problems, with one calling the remakes "a mess" and another simply pondering, "what have they done?"

In addition to all the in-game problems, there was also a major launch hiccup that gave some PlayStation players early access to "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy." Those who preordered the title were able to start playing it as soon as midnight hit in their local time zone, which allowed some gamers in the Eastern hemisphere to play the game over 24 hours before it was meant to be out. As VGC reported, this major mix-up also led to "GTA: The Trilogy" being temporarily pulled from the PlayStation store until the release time could be straightened out.

In many ways, the long-awaited rollout of this remastered trilogy didn't go according to plan. It seems as though Rockstar's promised "across-the-board enhancements" for the "GTA" trilogy aren't all they were cracked up to be. But hey, at least fans have the next-gen version of "Grand Theft Auto 5" to look forward to, right?