Rockstar has released a patch aimed at fixing the many issues plaguing Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.
In case you’ve missed the furore, Rockstar recently released a new version of the first three 3D Grand Theft Auto games. Dubbed Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, it was developed by Grove Street Games, who’d worked on the mobile versions of the game as well as several other Rockstar ports.
But it wasn’t all it cracked up to be, and it wasn’t just that the Definitive Edition, which landed on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, made some odd changes to the characters. We tackled San Andreas last week and the more we pushed on with it, the more problems we spotted. Aside from falling through the scenery twice, we spotted missing textures, fuzzy textures, the eye-gougingly bad rain effect and more.
But, going by other reports, we got off lightly. Rockstar has started to address the problem with the Definitive Edition and has put out a patch which fixes a lot of issues. You can find the full list of changes here, but here are a few selections from the patch notes:
- Fixed multiple instances of holes in the map
- Fixed an issue where the game would crash when switching from TV mode to table mode during the loading screen
- Fixed an issue where Police Officers can be seen floating before a police car spawns during the Reuniting the Families cutscene
- Fixed an issue with Tommy Vercetti’s character model going into a T-Pose during the cutscene for In the Beginning
- Fixed an issue with Claude floating in the cutscene for the mission Big ‘n’ Veiny
That should give you an idea of the problems that those playing the Definitive Edition have had to deal with. We’ve yet to dive back in, but YouTuber GeauxBurns has tackled the updated version and reported that, while it fixes some issues, there’s a long way to go.
The “good news” is that, after Rockstar pulled the games from digital storefronts, so you’d have to purchase the Definitive Edition if you hadn’t already bought the original titles, they’re back. So why the quotation marks? Because you can only purchase the original releases through Rockstar’s launcher, on PC. Yes, anyone who purchased the Definitive Edition will get them for free but you still can’t buy them from Steam.
Rockstar is hopefully going to put out more patches but the Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition situation is going to be damaging to the company’s reputation, particularly since it was Rockstar’s choice to pull the original games. They’ll recover, of course, but this does raise some serious questions about digital preservation.
