There are so many changes in the GTA Trilogy patch that Rockstar didn't even try to list them - but the port's original devs have been scrubbed from title screens

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Grove Street Games are a little less prevalent now

GTA Trilogy The Definitive Edition
(Image credit: Rockstar Games)

The GTA Trilogy's new patch is far bigger than Rockstar seems to want to admit, with a host of quality-of-life adjustments in addition to its visual improvements.

Yesterday, the GTA Trilogy - a collection of GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas which launched in a pretty shaky state in 2021 - received its first update in two years. From the patch notes, you might assume that the changes were pretty minor - Rockstar says that as of November 12, the game had received "numerous fixes and improvements," and it had "added Classic Lighting mode which restores the look and feel of the sky in the original games."

For those of you particularly fond of San Andreas' sepia palette, that's great news, but if you simply took Rockstar at its word, you'd be missing out on some pretty chunky changes that have been added to the game. Twitter user Besk, for instance, notes that GTA 3 and Vice City now allow you to run and gun with larger weapons, like shotguns and flamethrowers, in a change that wasn't even present in the original games.

Besk also says that it wasn't just old glitches that have been fixed but new ones unique to the Trilogy release - you can no longer, for instance, glitch through stretches of open water to get to Liberty City's other islands. Elsewhere, they highlighted several visual and animation improvements, including an adjustment to the soda-drinking animation that saw CJ up-end cans onto his face rather than into his mouth.

Interestingly, while the patch notes themselves are minor, it seems as though Rockstar is keen to stamp its impact on this update. User TJGM noticed that mentions and logos of Grove Street Games, the company that created the Trilogy editions of each of the three games, appear to have been scrubbed from menus and splash screens. Rockstar, publisher Take-Two, and development tool owner Epic Games are the only companies mentioned in the games' intro, though it's likely that Grove Street is still mentioned in the end credits.

Rockstar could, of course, be keen to put a greater stamp on the games because of the inclusion of Vice City, which will be the location for GTA 6. While you could argue that GTA 3 is more important than its counterparts and San Andreas has the greater legacy, Vice City and the wider state of Leonida are set to have the spotlight shined on them next, so a new coat of paint for this older version can't hurt.

On its 20th anniversary, a GTA San Andreas veteran shares that the open world was originally split into three maps: "Memory was very tight on the PS2."

Ali Jones
Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.