My strongest and most enduring memory of Grand Theft Auto will always be creasing into complete hysterics watching my mate pile into a crumpled police officer with a wooden baseball bat in GTA 3 after school one time. Young’uns these days just don’t appreciate how revolutionary it was to be able to hit a cop with a thing after he’d already fallen over. Suffice it to say I’ve got good memories of the open world series’ nascent forays into 3D, though never enough to tempt me into revisiting them, especially given the poor reception to Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. I can sympathise. I’m annoyed just having to type a colon and a dash in the same game name.
If you’re in a similarly non-fussed position (I will never not be annoyed that ‘nonplussed’ doesn’t mean what it sounds like it should mean) I can’t imagine a lighting update that’s been available on the mobile versions for a while is enough to tempt you back. But what is a reporter’s job if not pathetically treading water between chunklets of Grand Theft Auto news, upon the publishing of which Graham presses the button to release the nutritious pellets on which we all wholly subsist? I hope he doesn’t read that last sentence. I don’t get my pellet if the syntax becomes too convoluted. Moving swiftly on.
As reported by Rockstar Intel, the ‘Classic Lightning’ mode was a feature added last year when Rockstar released the Definitive Edition games on mobile in partnership with Netflix. The mode – which is now available in all versions as an toggleable graphics menu option – apparently “restores the look and feel of the sky in the original games”.
I can’t confirm this, but according to this Resetera thread, the new update has also removed remaster-ers Grove Street Games from the splash screen, which seems incredibly gross and petty, whatever your thoughts on the quality of the release. Take-Two gonna Take-Two, I guess.
In other news Grandiose, Theftacular, and Automatic, Take Two are currently “highly confident” about a fall 2025 release date. That’s ‘Autumn’, for those of you who don’t break down in histrionic convulsions upon seeing a photograph of some beans on a bit of toasted bread.