Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition

Grand Theft Auto III - The Definitive Edition is the remastered version of the 2001 action-adventure game, released as part of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition alongside Vice City and San Andreas. Grove Street Games developed the collection and Rockstar Games published it. It launched on November 11, 2021 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and Android and iOS versions followed on December 14, 2023. The original game was made by DMA Design, the studio later renamed Rockstar North.

The story takes place in Liberty City, a fictional city loosely modeled on New York City and spread across three islands. The protagonist, Claude, never speaks. During a bank robbery his girlfriend Catalina shoots him and leaves him behind, and he ends up arrested. After the prison convoy is ambushed, he gets away with another inmate, the explosives expert 8-Ball, and starts taking jobs for the Leone Mafia family. Over time he also works for the yakuza, a corrupt police inspector and a wealthy businessman, while his search for revenge pulls him into conflict with the Colombian Cartel that Catalina now runs.

Play takes place from a third-person view. Players advance the plot by completing missions with fixed goals, and several jobs can be available at once. Between missions, the city can be explored freely on foot or in vehicles, and side activities include vigilante, firefighting, paramedic and taxi work. The game begins in Portland, with Staunton Island and Shoreside Vale opening up as the story continues. Crimes raise a wanted level shown as stars, and players fight with melee attacks, firearms and explosives. If Claude’s health runs out, he wakes up at the nearest hospital without his weapons, armor and some cash.

The remaster replaces the original lighting with a new system and brings updated character and vehicle models, improved shadows and reflections, longer draw distances and a redesigned HUD with map navigation. Controls follow the scheme of Grand Theft Auto V, a weapon wheel was added, and failed missions can be restarted from checkpoints. The Switch version supports gyro aiming and touchscreen input. A November 2024 update let players run and shoot at the same time in Grand Theft Auto III and added a lighting option closer to the original game. Some cheats and music tracks from the earlier release are not included, and some camera angles from the original were removed.

The collection took about two years to make and runs on Unreal Engine 4, with the original physics code carried over and artificial intelligence used to upscale textures before manual cleanup. The developers called Grand Theft Auto III the hardest of the three to update because of its older assets. The collection received negative reviews on release. Critics liked the lighting, checkpoints and improved shooting, but pointed to bugs, crashes, character models and rain effects, and it was review bombed on Metacritic. Rockstar apologized and released several updates. The mobile release of Grand Theft Auto III, offered through Netflix, passed four million downloads before it left that service in December 2024.