Rockstar finally updated the PC, PlayStation and Xbox versions of its classic GTA Trilogy to receive the same improvements already found in its mobile version.
GTA Trilogy was originally released for PC and consoles exactly three years ago to decidedly negative reception due to its various graphical issues and glitches, prompting a sarcastic response from the port’s original development studio and an apology from Rockstar itself.
Now, three years later, the improvements already found in the very well-received smartphone version of GTA Trilogy, released through Netflix, can finally be found elsewhere. Most notably, this includes the trilogy’s classic lighting mode, which restores the brighter, more colorful vibes of the original versions of the games.
As RockstarIntel points out, you can now find the Classic Lighting option in the pause menu of each game, although, somewhat tellingly, the feature has been enabled by default. Other additions include improvements to the character model, as well as visual improvements to heat haze and ambient clouds.
The disastrous launch of GTA Trilogy sparked countless refund requests when the game arrived with bugs. Rockstar quickly took the game offline for three days, albeit with different concerns: apparently to remove the inclusion of unlicensed music within the game files, as well as files with developer comments and the infamous Hot Coffee sex minigame.
“There are a lot of problems here,” Digital Foundry wrote about the GTA Trilogy in the package’s original release, “problems that are so glaring, jarring, and ridiculous that it’s hard to understand how the game got through QA.”
Rockstar apologized, offered a free Rockstar game for PC owners, and began providing patches. But problems persisted, and the release of GTA Trilogy on Steam in January 2023 generated similar complaints about its poor quality. We hope Rockstar finally provided it.