In the modern age of gaming, it seems that players are plagued by the constant amount of remakes and ports of titles they have already played. Sometimes these remakes and ports will add new content, expand on the gameplay, or possibly change the entire way the game is played to introduce a fresh new take on the game for many players to enjoy.

In the case of titles like Resident Evil 2 Remake and Resident Evil 3 Remake, the game was turned from a PS1 tank-controlled title into a third-person horror game, attempting to amp up the scares with the new RE engine that was used in Resident Evil 7. In the case of Shadows of Colossus, the game remained the same compared to the PS2 title, despite the addition of new graphics and a slightly altered physics engine. 

While players may be asking for new content, there’s always room to return to older titles. However, when older titles get remastered or remade, the game-changing possibility can be to the detriment of both the title and the players.

What sounds like a great idea on paper, remastering three of the most loved GTA titles from the PS2 era, and bringing them to modern platforms, didn’t turn out the way players thought. Rockstar claimed that the game would feature minor changes to the gameplay, and updated graphics, making it seem like the game would get a proper widescreen patch and possibly some updated UI elements. However, their previous remaster of L.A. Noire looked better enough on the PS4 and PS5 that players didn’t think the GTA Trilogy would be getting a graphical Overhaul. Rockstar has also seemed to fall out of favor of the public, neglecting Red Dead Redemption 2’s online mode and the company focusing on GTA Online and seemingly not working on another title. 

It turned out that while the game’s graphics got updated, the game’s visuals somehow took a tank for the worst. Players have gone to their computer to vent their frustrations about how the game looks, from cutscenes in San Andreas making it look like it was prerendered from an early PlayStation 1 title. However, there’s more to the graphical details than that. The game’s distinct art style hasn’t sat well with fans, as the game’s world has been altered to resemble each title’s respective box art style from the original. 

However, this has turned into bump maps being misplaced on characters, broken model rigging, flat color textures, and fog removal, making the game world feel like it’s suspended in a void rather than situated somewhere in real life. The game is filled with bugs, which are chronicled on the game’s subreddit. This has all culminated in the game being removed from PC, as the game’s release has caused the Rockstar Launcher to break beyond any fast repair.

What may seem like a drop in the bucket of this game’s great problems has also removed multiple songs from the title. According to reports, the title has lost 47 songs from San Andreas and Vice City Combined. However, while the player cannot hear the GTA Trilogy music during normal gameplay, the songs are still in the game. They’re just hidden behind some code in the title. 

Enter a Twitter user who has been digging through the code of the PC version seeing that they got their hands on it before it was removed from the Rockstar Launcher. However, while they were digging through the files for the game, they noticed something that they didn’t expect to see. 

The San Andreas portion of the game files noticed that all the GTA Trilogy cut music was still inside the game. However, the game refuses the play it due to a script skipping over the tracks for the title. Attached to the tweet is a screenshot of the files with cut music sitting in the files. 

Vice City is a little different compared to San Andreas. While the cut music remains, the game has been split into key points to allow songs to be dropped from the setlist of songs. The only song to officially not cut the game is Michael Jackson’s song “Billie Jean.” 

Looking further into the game, while the original songs are in the game, the setlist is meant to be based on the Vice City 10th anniversary version. However, with all the songs in, a modder could easily program the songs back in and get them to play. 

This begs the question, why claim the songs aren’t in the game, only to leave the cut songs in? Is it a bone to be thrown for PC modders who want to purchase the game so that they can add the original music tracks in? or is it just that they left the files in and didn’t bother removing them, even though they didn’t plan on adding the songs?

Even more so, developer comments have been left in the code of the game. A Twitter user posted an image of one of the developer excerpts from the code, stating, “This shit doesn’t work the way they wrote it below, so we’ll just show the text and place a blip at the beginning of the mission.”

The community decided that this isn’t Rockstar north talking about themselves, but who’s talking about who isn’t completely clear. It’s assumed that the conversations about the game’s code are about the programmers who originally wrote the code. Whoever was rewriting the code didn’t seem too pleased at the work done on the original title. 

While it’s certain that there are issues, what is known is that the game has been off to a pretty rocky start. Players know that this isn’t what was promised, and whatever has been done to the three titles fans have held so dearly isn’t what they were expecting from a prestigious company like Rockstar.