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Would you actually want a Grand Theft Auto remaster?Don’t the sequels effectively remaster the same formula each time already?

Don’t the sequels effectively remaster the same formula each time already?

A screenshot of GTA: Vice City in which the game’s protagonist is walking next to a fancy car, in front of a fancy house.

During an earnings call, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked, given the likelihood that manyGrand Theft Auto 5players had never played earlier games in the series, what the company’s view was on possible remasters of older GTA games.

Zelnick dodged the question, and so I am bringing it to you: wouldyouwant remasters of olderGrand Theft Autogames? I would not.

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I have fond memories of GTA3, due in large part to the novelty of having an open world 3D city to explore. I liked sitting on a rooftop, shooting at cars down below, and then watching them crash wildly over the sides of bridges. Videogames.

Here’s the problem: this is pretty much all I remember of either of these games. I have similarly slim memories of GTA 1, 2, and San Andreas, and exactly zero desire to go back to any of them.

Grand Theft Auto games do not appeal to me because of their stories and characters. Returned to now, their shooting, driving and exploration would pale in comparison to any modern equivalent. Plus, their methods for delivering stories and quests - often given to you via garbled phone booth conversations - are entirely antiquated.

I liked and like GTA games because they offer a big, new, expensive-looking city to explore and muck around inside. To meaningfully remaster any of the older games so they could deliver this experience again would mean remaking them entirely. They would require new worlds, new cutscenes, and considering the older games had silent protagonists, probably new characters. At which point: isn’t that what each new Grand Theft Auto game does anyway? Grand Theft Auto has come a long way between GTA3 and GTA5, but it’s still, each time, fundamentally a refinment of a formula.