The Definitive Edition is GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas rebuilt for newer hardware, with fresh lighting and controls borrowed from GTA V. The missions, maps and collectibles didn't change, so our guides for the original games work for the remaster too. Pick a game and start there.
The three games
2001 · Liberty City
Grand Theft Auto III
Full 100% guide273 map pins
Platforms: First out on PS2, Xbox, PC
2002 · Vice City
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Full 100% guide314 map pins
Platforms: First out on PS2, Xbox, PC
2004 · San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Full 100% guide805 map pins
Platforms: First out on PS2, Xbox, PC
What the Definitive Edition changed
All three games were rebuilt in Unreal Engine 4, so you get new lighting, new character models and a much longer draw distance. Launch was rough. Some faces looked odd and a few signs had typos, but later patches fixed a good chunk of that.
Controls now work like GTA V. You pick weapons and radio stations from a wheel, and aiming has proper lock-on and free aim. You notice that most in GTA III and Vice City, where the old aiming was pretty clumsy. Fail a mission and you can retry straight away instead of driving back to the start, and a few of the longer ones got checkpoints. You can also set a waypoint on the pause map and follow the GPS line, which makes package hunting with our maps a lot faster.
Each game has its own achievement and trophy list now, mostly for story missions with some for side jobs and collectibles. A handful of licensed songs are missing from the radio because of music rights, though most of those had already been cut from the older PC and phone versions.
The missions themselves did not change. They come in the same order with the same names, so our walkthroughs apply as written. Hidden packages, tags, oysters, horseshoes, snapshots, rampages and stunt jumps sit where they always did, and the 100% checklist and its rewards are the same. Cheat codes still work, button combos on console and typed words on PC. Using one can block achievements and trophies though, so keep a clean save if you care about those.
Release and platforms
- Released
- November 11, 2021
- Platforms
- PlayStation 4
- PlayStation 5
- Xbox One
- Xbox Series X|S
- Nintendo Switch
- PC
- Phones and tablets
- December 14, 2023, on iOS and Android for Netflix subscribers
- Made by
- Rockstar Games, with Grove Street Games doing the remaster work
| Game | First released | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
GTA III |
October 22, 2001 | PS2, Xbox, PC |
Vice City |
October 27, 2002 | PS2, Xbox, PC |
San Andreas |
October 26, 2004 | PS2, Xbox, PC |
PS2 came first each time. The PC and Xbox versions followed later.























