The best thing about this bit is that it kinda mirrors one DF did themselves in their GTA 3 analysis video. Something along those lines: John: "So I'll call Richard now [he hadn't appeared in the video up to that point] and ask him: Richard, which version should one play?" Richard: "No." And that was it, Richard never appeared again in that video.
This is one of those stories where I knew all the details going in, because I was just there, watching in real time as a game, and multiple companies, just slip, fall on their butts, break their hip, and then poop themselves within seconds. I'm so disappointed, yet somewhat actually impressed to see a failure happen this quickly. Usually it happens over months/years prior or after, but in a span of weeks... Rockstar, you keep on breaking records in more ways than one!
Its like he said, it was supposed to be a "slam dunk" I am sure none of the managers that approved this did any research on what assets they had left, or how hard it be to port to UE4. I am not defending Rockstar, but pulling the trigger before quarterly statements is standard practice:P
@@myfatassdick GTA is Rockstar's flagship series and the two brands are inseparable; it doesn't matter that Grove Street was the developer doing this work, these remasters ultimately make Rockstar look bad Rockstar let this happen: there's a lot more people working for any of Rockstar's other studios than there are at Grove Street, so maybe they should have offered more material assistance if they wanted to avoid this disaster
If you listen to GTA radio channels, they make fun of corporate practices….so Rockstar behaving the way it currently does is really a monstrous journey of becoming something it once hated. I have very little faith for further installments of the franchise.
Amen, brother. But I can’t say I’m surprised. Once you hit the kind of success R* has, I feel like that just happens. Sucks. Red Dead 2 was amazing so hopefully this just a setback, I really hope.
I'll never understand why rockstar or grove street don't just buy the updated assets that the modders have spent YEARS creating. I'm sure the modders would be more than happy to put their work in an official game, plus, they'll make money! Most of the work is already done!
Even by corporate greed standards, the whole Definitive Edition debacle was an absolute dumpster fire. The sheer arrogance and stupidity to force an underprepared studio to cobble up a quick rehash of some of the most beloved titles in history within a ridiculously tight deadline is just mindblowing. Like Matt said, releasing these games once every year for say $30 / piece would've been so much more profitable in the long run. But nobody cares about the long run anymore, it's crazy.
These companies have been so fixated on loot boxes and crappy mobile cash grabs the last several years that it seems they've forgotten how to make games. You wouldn't think it but there was a time when even the Triple A companies took pride in their franchises and their libraries of games, those times are long gone now and it's only getting worse..
Grove street games underprepared? they already worked on it before and triped on the same rock in an even more clusterfuckery way, maybe if they didnt abandoned the old port they could had fixed it overtime and actually make a good port then they could have had a great base for the definitive edition
The reason why is because most corporate positions nowadays are based on generating short-term profits. You pull off something that makes a quick buck and you get promoted or find a higher paying position in another company. So many corporate executives are looking at something to churn out a quick buck with no regards for long lasting consequences. All the people above them see is they spent X amount and they got Y amount in profit which is a profit margin of Z and therefore they are promoted. That's why you're seeing so many corporations making really dumb and short-sighted decisions. Crank out a shoddy profit, make a quick profit, and let the next poor bastard deal with the fallout.
This is a fundamental problem with the way capitalism manifests in modern society. Quartly profits are all that matters, nobody considers the long term damage to corporate reputation. That's why preordering is a bad idea.
And I hope it would remain that way. I mean, can you imagine an even bigger fuck-up than GTA Trilogy? So bad, that Matt will upload an episode two days after the game's release? I don't want to live in that timeline tbh.
Ratchet Deadlocked on PS3. The DIGITAL version specifically. Bad framerate, constant twitching in cutscenes, bugs, and screwed up models in some sections (Vox's teeth and the infamous zoom-in on Ratchet's face)
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines Yup! Always remember, conservatives are the REAL progenitors of "cancel culture." It was always Fox News who was pushing the "video games turn kids violent" narrative despite zero evidence. Then there's the weirdos who burned Dixie Chicks albums simply because one of them said she wasn't satisfied with W. Bush.
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines Jack Thompson is just the opposite of Anita Sarkeesian... ones a liberal who wants everything censored and is triggered... the other is a conservative who whats everything censored and is triggered
@21:45 As someone who has been doing QA for over 9 years, just wanted to say thanks for what you said in regards to this game's QA. It does bug me (no pun intended) sometimes when I see comments asking "did they not even test this?!" or that "unexpected technical issues" comment from Rockstar. Mainly because not only would Grove's Street QA have raised red flags, but Rockstars own QA would have done the same when they recieved mile stone builds of the game, so they knew full well the state of the game but still decided to make Grove Street keep to that deadline. So thanks again for speaking up for QA in general and I look forward to the next video.
What blows me away is, the mods for graphics, fixes and whatnot for the original versions were far superior than what we received. If I was in R*'s/TT's position to remaster, I would've instead contacted the mod authors and gave them lump sum + royalties, along with a plague somewhere in-game to honor all those who worked on the mods (with names etc.). This would've been a huge plus, and done them wonders to get their credibility back that they've lost over the years with GTA Online and RDR Online (Plus lack of DLCs for both games). Care about modding community that loves the game more than the company - check. Care about the original content to the point where you hire/pay those that did the work for you and properly compensate them - check. Honor the original content. HONOR THE ORIGINAL CONTENT. Ugh. It disgusts me how they unabashedly shit on Grand Theft Auto. Period. Full Stop. Then 'rewrite history' by removing the superior products, making it so torrenting is the only way to get it (sucks for console players). What sucks is it seems the soul of Rockstar is still in there, GTA V was alright (base game) and RDR 2 singleplayer was outstanding. But the body (take two among other things) is just.. rotten, and it's been seeping into Rockstar for decades. Just a damned shame.
As someone who worked in game QA for a year THANK YOU for pointing out that these bugs 100% would have been reported and were just ignored. I've seen a lot of blame being pointed at a lazy QA department and it's been infuriating. Keep up the great work.
@@Drakkel What's the point of even having a QA department if the bosses are just going to ignore them and rush crap out anyway? Just to have someone else to blame?
Fun fact : that's actually a glitch that exist in the original console release, but it only crash, nothing more, you juste need to reload your save, it's the auto-save of the Definitive Edition (and mobile / PS360 ports) that corrupt the save since it always load at the moment of the crash.
I appreciate that Grove Street isn't being trashed too hard. A team of 21 for 3 remasters for a massive audience of a beloved game is TOO MUCH. Rockstar, who has teams, who has funding, who controls deadlines and QA, is responsible.
Grove Street could have turned down the job or offered to alternatively do a focused remaster of a single game. Anyone in their right mind knows this kind of project is way WAY too big for a team that small to handle on a deadline. They should have known their limits. Yeah, it all leads back to Rockstar's poor decision-making with their own franchise, but Grovestreet saw dollar signs. Both are to blame. It's too bad because a lot of Grovestreet's work modernizing and updating the game's environments and visuals is lovely. It's a shame that the volume of work forced them to rely entirely on automated processes instead of using them where it made sense. Eventually these will probably be the ultimate versions of the games given enough time and mod support. But even now in Summer of 2023 they're still kind of a joke.
@@benjamincox4211 Because it was CLEARLY way too big a project for them and their failure to deliver ended up nearly shuttering the company and getting them kicked off the IP permanently... Theyre responsible for one of the worst bellyflops in game development history. Anyone with even basic experience in games development KNOWS that the team they had was WAY too small for the project they bid on.
@@geeknproud321 like you said, anyone should know and yet rockstar still hired them. This is on them. No company will turn down a huge deal like that and it’s unreasonable to expect them to. This all comes from rockstar not wanting to pay their own team to make a good game
@@benjamincox4211 I mean that's actually a fair point. Rockstar also should have known better. They are veterans among veterans. But also Grovestreet overstepped their abilities 100%.
As tragic as this moment in gaming history is, what's even more tragic is the tons and tons of gamers who are like "wHo CaReS? iTs JuSt A gAmE, tHeYll UpDaTe It." Further proving to rockstar that there is a market of dumb zombies gamers who will consume the most shittiest of slop.
"It's just a games" Yeah a game that cost $70 dollars plus tax. And of course there's those who do enjoy the game but feel the need to brag that they don't have any problems because it's getting shit on. Like good for you but not everyone is so lucky. I don't nor can't buy these games but I can at least show some sympathy.
@@blueprint7 That's cool and all, but nobody asked, coomer. "Or maybe they smart enough to wait before buying you big baby" *_I dOn'T nOr CaN't BuY tHeSe GaMeS_*
It's honestly impressive, the ability to deny yourself an easy paycheck. This should've been the most no-brainer, easy cash-grab release in years, and they managed to botch it this bad.
It wouldn’t take longer if they had done one game at a time to they can triple/quadruple dip into customers’ wallets with the 3 remasters and then finished trilogy
"Rockstar, what happened? We was like family" "I got caught up in the money, the power... I don't give a shit. Oh fuck, man... I had no choice... I had to do it... I just see the opportunity. OH, when I'm gone, everyone gonna remember my name... Rockstar! OHhhh..."
The issue about the music is that Rockstar didn't even try to renew the licenses, they just didn't care. The most expensive song to licenses as far as I know is Thunderstruck which goes for 750K so Rockstar could easily drop a million and still get the song, no corporation will never sell at a certain price. There is always a price. And the thing too is that if they had to remove songs, they could of replaced them.
The thing is, that glitch is in the original. My CJ was riding a motorcycle on the freeway when he fell through the map. He appeared back on the road but the bike was gone. Mission: Snail Trail.
@@DarkDreamsAndMoonlitNights never had this glitch happen to me once, the only time I fell through the map was when I was messing around with cheat codes and used the infinite oxygen cheat while driving my car to the sea, since you're supposed to start drowning the moment your car goes underwater and it starts floating a little underwater it never reaches the bottom sea level, but with this cheat on you just goes through land underwater and falls into the void, lol.
Because the industry is still fairly new when it comes to standards like this. Compare it to the music industry. How much old music is lost to time because they existed in a time before masters were treated like valuable assets?
A lot of studios honestly just don't think that far ahead and you almost can't blame them. Like, would Nintendo have really believed you if you told them the Mario game they're working on the 90s is going to still have people clammering for it like 3 decades from now, *and* think that investing in long term storage for all these source code files would be worth it?
@@charlesblasini2134 I think remaking games has been around long enough after the multiple ports that have been sold of this very game. The company NOT having the source code protected and at the ready is both the reason they fucked this up and a cost they pass on to the customer when they don't take their time to find another solution. You're a software company. Control your assets. It's a fairly simple concept for a billion dollar company.
You know that physicals theory actually makes a lot of sense. Last year in my local CEX the shelves were stacked with copies of Cyberpunk the first week of release, Rockstar clearly were learning lessons...just all the WRONG lessons.
I knew what corporates plan was right when I saw they weren’t releasing physical copies. This is exactly what people were afraid with this digital age these companies evil intent taking advantage of the consumer with garbage and take away any form of reimbursement
In a nutshell: Rockstar wanted to remaster three giant games (with the prospect of having to remake them completely) without the cost or time needed for said undertaking. Bravo.
It always hits me that what happened to Rockstar is karmic justice to them due to what they did to they dedicated fans which do mods to freshen up and made they're games more replayable.
At this point Rockstar should just go back to their roots, take a break from AAAA feature creep and make a new Lemmings game (?). They even have the funds to add a fully licensed soundtrack, unlike the first game.
@@BigEOT3 Now that’s some fresh information I didn’t know before. Lemmings was just a bit on my mind recently because of a newish video that talked about its public-domain soundtrack. The mere fact that the same studio that made it would end up creating GTA is astonishing.
This is one of the few situations where I'd have no issue pirating the original versions of the game. If Take Two isn't going to let us purchase the objectively superior originals, then yargh maties!
Funny enough, I'd been meaning to play the original GTA 3D trilogy for years and never got around to it. When the definitive versions came out, I saw how bad they were, and I saw that the originals had been delisted, I immediately pirated GTA 3 in my first act of piracy ever. I regret nothing.
It's actually shocking that a company like Rockstar Games, who's swimming in money thanks to what GTA V and GTA Online still bring in monthly, couldn't be arsed to put some resources into remastering some of their most beloved games and had it outsourced, with 90% of the world "improvements" being done by a faulty AI.
"To bE FAir tO rOckStAr GaMes, tHinGs aReN't ChEaP!" Those would be the words that R*/Take-Two Drones would use while trying to excuse the utter short-sighted incompetence of a multi-million dollar company not putting aside a good amount to give remasters of their classic titles the premium treatment.
This was fantastic as always and I totally agree it should have been GTA 3 alone. It would have stood a chance at being decent. Rockstar has fallen so far from good grace. I won't even preorder GTA 6 in 2043.
@@elmedico3717 I mean…not any more dude. Like yeah, back then it was the shit and the one that basically “started it all” but it’s pretty forgettable when you compare it to the ones that came after.
as a silent hill fan, i feel a deep kinship with the poor gta fans enduring this rn. you are not alone, brothers and sisters. welcome to the hd remaster ranch [written in comic sans]
Imagine wishing desperately to play the originals and to enter the fan base, but can't because they're nowhere online, and the originals are $100 used.
_"We then took advantage of the effects in the new renderer, which enabled us to do far more than add a new lightning effect here and there."_ And it shows. It really does. Like how they made the rain look infinitely worse.
That's been fixed. In fact almost all these issues have. This video is about 2 weeks too late. Rockstar stepped in and took over from Grove Street Games and got it up to scratch. The rain is good, the fog is back and the bugs are gone.
It's honestly kind of endearing how far the video game industry has come and yet we are still witness to complete utter failures at this degree from highly respected publishers. The experience of being able to laugh at this colossal dumpster fire is A LOT more valuable than some halfway competent cash grab remaster that comes and goes without anyone noticing.
Now that I know the studio had 21 people I’m frankly surprised the games work as well as they do. That’s 7 people to port each game, about 1 person per game per platform lol
@@dmenor11ification Yeah i concur. This is not worth supporting. if you buy this then its basically rewarding greed. Only time i think its ok to buy is if they fix the Toy Story face models to something more real as the originals were, basically so GTA doesnt look like a Pixar movie basically
What they should have done is follow the Halo Master Chief Edition concept and sell them all together, but release them one at a time Would have given them the time to get it done, and gotten people invested in sticking around
All I want in a modern game is to have it well polished AT release, have most of its content at launch instead of cutting a chunk of it for paid DLC, and no bullshit microtransactions that give you an advantage over other players online. It's like I'm asking for the impossible with these expectations
Yeah, it's not as if Doom Eternal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Resident Evil Village, Returnal, Monster Hunter World, Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, Halo Infinite, Stray, Guilty Gear Strive, Forza Horizon V, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Final Fantasy Origins Strangers of Paradise, Bravely Default 2, Metroid Dread, and, oh, yeah, a little somethin-somethin called *Elden Ring* came out in just the last three years. All of those from platform holders or major publishers, btw; I'm not even going to begin to list the litany of indie hits. By all means, enjoy funny looks at the foibles of projects that went awry. But don't let that confuse you about the amount of absolutely fantastic new releases we get every year.
It's amazing how the bare minimum that we 90s and 2000s gamers got it's too much to ask in the current year. And the buggy messes we made fun of are now the standard in the industry
_"I'll have two number 9s, number 9 large, number 6, with extra dip, number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda."_ *~ Big Smoke in 4K quality edition*
Thats the kind of turn around i was expecting from you on this. After hearing this explanation oh the graphics overall, I get it. It’s artist syndrome in that you see ways to make things “better”, but you commit to a level of consistent quality you can’t maintain
By focusing more on the graphics for a game, collection, the gameplay should never be tossed asides, they could have tested the trilogy, delaying it until it is more solid, 60 euros for a broken mess is unacceptable. Edit: 60 euros remains too much expensive for a game or "collection" alone, but it's way worse when the final product is a broken mess.
The ME remasters had the decency to go back to the original engine the trilogy used - which is Unreal. Kinda surprised me how great they are, considering I thought Bioware - or really EA - would fuck it all up again like they did with Andromeda by mandating they use Frostbite or some shit. Leave it to Rockstar shortly after a stellar release with RDR2 and who sees GTA as their own identity to completely screw everything up.
Makes me appreciate Nier Replicant ver 1.2247. not only did it enhance the gameplay of the original, but added new content and ending that was very touching and bittersweet.
@@bearerofbadnews1375 These so called "remasters" will be so perfect if the company behind it actually realized it's a beloved franchise for many and not just an easy cash grab.
Something that bothers me is people keep calling the models “AI upscaled” when it’s really lazier than that. It’s just a smoothing modifier in every standard 3D software. Okay I actually can’t confirm without looking at the original models but I highly doubt there’s a functional AI for 3D model upscaling.
idk man, ive seen the original gta sa models quite a lot(at least the mobile ones, as that is the only version i own) and it REALLY does seem like they merely smoothed out the polygons or what have you, with nothing more.
I don't know if you'll see this but I've been watching your channel for a while and this is definitely the best video you've done in a long time. And I'm not trying to say that your other videos have suffered lack of quality or something... You just did an excellent job with the research here and there was some really funny stuff in here that really made me chuckle. I always enjoy your content but this video was like the Oscar winner for 2022. Cheers.
ah yes removing the better older versions of a game and saddling your customers with an inferior "remastered" version i think its colloquially known as "pulling a Blizzard" and it worked out soo well for them
A What Happened on American McGee's Alice would be poignant considering he released the story outline of the next game he wants to do, stating that EA just doesn't want anything to do with the IP, but doesn't want to sell it either. And/Or Parasite Eve. I loved the first two games, but BOY did the 3rd one fall flat on its face.
Ya looking back to when i played Madness Returns, it felt pretty mild and toned down compared to the first game. I figured it was just that many years since the first game, it was probably a different company etc. imagine if they made it sooner by the same people who made the first game.
It's honestly disheartening. With all of the public criticism and discussion over the declining state of much of the industry, instances like this feel like they're becoming more and more common. It makes me feel completely powerless.
@@chemergency The industry is too large and diversified to make that happen again, but you could primarily buy decent indigames like Darkest Dungeon, Rimworld etc. Its just the big titles that get ruined by coporate decisions (especially when they can have microtransactions) and even in this field there are still some great games like Anno 1800. It's just incredibly disheartening when it hits a franchise you like. I own all GTA games (got the first one in 1998) except for this definitve peace of crap. My heart is bleeding.
Mainstream can literally burn itself to the ground for cash. Just buy indie games, where the devs there actually care about you and make you feel "powerful".
I feel bad for Grove Street. 21 people told to remaster 3 different games with as little time as they were given. This is all Take Two's responsibility and they failed.
@@jamstonjulian6947 bc ppl still have hope that their favorite devs/publishers aren’t also greedy pieces of shit even though they are See: CDPR shortly before 2077 dropped
Y'know, in retrospect, I'm shocked there wasn't a Wha Happun on Sonic Colors Ultimate when that launched (both for new game buzz and LE SONIC BAD views). But now I also kinda see that that remaster had a pretty similar story (giving the task to a smaller studio, having engine troubles and the publisher rushing the game out to have a release out this year)
I’ll be honest I knew things weren’t right when there was no early reviews and no indication of anyone having early codes. I was so hyped for this but the closer we got to launch, the more I worried… and here we are… at What Happun?
15:20 Employee count on LinkedIn is always an under estimate, because lots of people don't use LinkedIn (it's not a very good site). The company I currently work for has 13 employees on LinkedIn, but the actual count is 24, almost twice as much. That said, even 40-50 employees wouldn't be enough for making 3 concurrent remasters of already buggy games on a short time frame and then dealing with the backlash and the bug fix workload.
I still regularly play Vice City on my PS2, for years I've dreamt of the same game but with updated graphics and less clunky gameplay/shooting, it'd be sn absolute dream... but they made this.
Got it for PC at last year steam winter sale for cheap, also with re3/reVC project which run better on modern PC before taken down. For original GTA SA steam edition, sure it bit sucks too, but there's version downgrader to v1.0 (Hot Coffee friendly) along with Silent Patch makes it much more playable than this defective edition.
25:28 "So it really behooves one..." (shows footage of horses and their hooves). That's exactly the sort of visual-script matching comedy I want and expect from this channel.
I love how San Andreas is a remastered version of a mobile port of an HD version of the Xbox 360 version of the game, it is so utterly bizarre and im not surprised that it is just terrible with all the most likely just spaghetti code and old code in the game
8:20 fucks me up a bit because I’ve seen these exact documents in person. Take two had the high quality model sheets and concept art for GTA III on display in Prague back in 2018… the hell happened to all that over the course of three years???
Something that bugs me is there are Mobile developers that handle remasters AMAZINGLY. Look at Feral Interactive and their remasters for example, they ported Rome: Total War to mobile a couple years back and released a Rome: Remastered earlier this year for it's 20th anniversary. Similar situation, different results.
@@rubz1390 Rome Remastered's problems stemmed from the source code they were basing it on. Atleast they didn't introduce major bugs, like GSG did with this. And they actively fixed bugs brought to their attention. (Also They gave a 50% coupon to Original Rome owners, so their remaster of a 20y/o game only cost $15, as opposed to Rockstar's $60)
What I love most about this video is that you released it exactly a month after the game was released God, literally every second of this video is pure, unadulterated chaos. It really showcases just how badly Rockstar fucked this up
@@zherofhicksgiven3613 the worst part about this isn't that the "definitive edition" released in such a piss poor state (and probably still is in such a state) or that Rockstar delisted the original games, it's the aftermath of it all. With the originals digitally delisted and the "remasters" the inferior versions, any physical copies you can find will be marked up to outrageously impossible prices
It’s almost 3 years removed from the release of this thing, and I’m still baffled how they thought they could slip the whole unpolished and crunch-laden mess past the fans unaddressed. I swear business execs just see reality incorrectly
There’s a theory going around that Dan Houser wrote Red Dead Redemption II in a way that if you look at it from a meta POV, it’s actually about the death of Rockstar Games. After seeing this pathetic excuse of a launch and learning that Take-Two’s CEO is named Strauss, the same name as the money hungry loan shark in Dutch’s gang, I’m inclined to believe it.
Sounds a bit far-fetched, but I wouldn't be shocked if Dan Houser had a grudge while making the game. Allthough the CEO's name is a hell of a coincidence if it wasn't intentional. Hmm...
Even though the results weren't great, I think it's really interesting to use machine learning to upscale a game the way they did. I wonder if, given more resources and perhaps a smaller scale, that could be successful to a degree.
Other games have done it, modders have done it for some games. Textures, meshes, videos all successfully upscaled. Difference is they had the time and resources to have a human check the output and probably a lot less to check than 3 openwork games.
It has proven to be quite a powerful tool yes. Modders have used it with great success, however you *HAVE* to do manual touch-ups or even combine different parts of textures from different algorithms to make it happen. Just dropping it in, crossing your fingers & shipping it to people is a recipe for disaster.
I always knew this was gonna be a problem. They rebranded the former war drum studios right as they announced the game and I knew something was up right away. They did a terrible remaster of san andreas on consoles before so I saw this coming.
Ever since this game came out, whenever I feel down, upset or angry, I just watch glitch clips from this game so that I can have a good hearty few laughs to cheer me up.
wha happun is such a good show bc most shows like it are basically pure negativity but like. i genuinely feel like matt has a passion for games as an art so even when hes being relentlessly negative theres a feeling of love there, genuine interest that makes these videos so cool as he digs real deep into the history of wild dev stories
At least Cyberpunk was a new game, and had a lot of untested elements because of how ambitious it was, like sure, the game was rushed, but I think everyone has a bit of fault in how things ended up with Cyberpunk's original release (and the game is still fairly good, specially after the updates). But this definitive edition is so obviously a completely insane heartless move for the Take Two Interactive corporation that I just can't help but laugh at all the madness.
That’s a weak excuse. CDPR had plenty of time (7 years) to develop a game where cops don’t just spawn behind your back or pedestrians don’t just get on their knees when you draw a gun. They still marketed it as “the next generation of open-world adventure” before the game released and expected gaming news outlets to review their game based on their pre-recorded footage. Both games had a disastrous launch - but in different ways. Rockstar made the release brief and didn’t promise a life-changing experience and a remake in the style of RDR2. They did announce that the old versions will be removed from stores. Their communication could be improved though, as well as their behavior towards some modders. CPDR on the other hand hyped Cyberpunk 2077 before anything was developed. It was a good decision to employ modders though.
@@hathu5185 I know. That’s why it was a bad idea to announce Cyberpunk 2077 with a CGI trailer during the development of The Witcher 3. Rockstar probably started developing GTA 6 in 2013 and it wasn’t until now they’ve confirmed the development of the next title. Give them a few weeks or months and they will officially announce the game with a trailer that was actually recorded within the game.
Thank you for making the point about the release of this being WORSE than Cyberpunk and a somewhat unfair comparison. I've been trying to point that out every time I see it. Considering that modders have been successfully doing what Grove Street failed to do for years is proof that this was a worse disaster.
Thinking about it, I think I have an idea as to why they did the remasters all together instead of separately like you suggested. And it is licensing rights. The music specifically, they probably needed to pay rights for every game, and it may have been cheaper to do that considering it a single big game instead of doing contracts for each one separately
Jack Thompson wasn't the only one that rallied against the GTA franchise, years before that when GTA first came out there was an episode of 'Police Camera Action' (showing police arresting speed drivers) Where they showcased footage from the PS1 game and said it encourages/inspires dangerous driving. Madness.
I'm SO glad I own the physicsl copies of these games. Side note: Anyone else want Matt to do a Wha Happun? on FNAF: Security Breach? FNAF: Help Wanted (the dev team's previous project) was a powerhouse and was released to critically acclaimed reviews. It had few performance issues and bridged the gap between the books and the old games well. This new game--like these GTA remasters--is a buggy, stitched together mess. Steel Wool Studios is an even smaller company than Grove Street (I believe they have 12 people), but we've seen what they can develop when they have the appropriate time and support. I'd REALLY love to know how much of a development hell it became after Scott Cawthon stepped down.
21:45 From that statement alone has pulled triggered Matt's QA experience, though it had me laughing seeing how Matt has to make a quick comment in response to that statement, it helped to assure that the QA department wasn't being lazy, especially when Matt has experience in QA.
This is arguably the release that has pissed me off the most. It was such an unnecessary debacle but the sheer arrogance of releasing a product in this state goes beyond incompetence and transcends into being unethical. GTA3 is a 20 year old game that doesn't run at 60 FPS on current gen consoles!
Thats because of the engine. Rockstar for some reason never cared about a framerate Bigger than 30 FPS until the Pc Port of GTA V and the PC Port of RDR2. Not even RDR2 runs at 60 FPS on past consoles, and they could If they tried, lol.
Was a guy on YT named AstroSoup. He summed up current Rockstar pretty good. I forget exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of "Rockstar is like a literal rockstar now. Old, washed up, and coasting by on the success of their long gone glory days."
Fact is Rockstar used Grove Street Studio like a sweat shop to port these and that ain't right. I feel sorry for the less than 2 dozen employees, the stress they must've been under and still are now to fix the mess despite Rockstar failing to support them appropriately, both financially and in terms of backup manpower which should have been allocated to the project.
If people started holding Rockstar accountable for their greedy actions and quit blaming companies with only 21 employees then maybe they would start giving us good games again. Yet y'all are actually excited for Gta6 (aka gta online part 2)
The same people very likely bought the recent Elite Dangerous DLC's. I'll admit they *scammed* me once and I refuse to fall for it twice. Some of us learn, others return to the poison swamp to drink from the poison water constantly while whining they are poisoned. P.T. Barnum; the inventor of *the freakin' modern circus* states "there are suckers born every second" and that "a fool and their money are easily parted."
Great video and summary of the situation! I love how you acknowledge the issues coming from higher up rather than on the ground level. I often see people saying that the developers of games in situations like this must be 'lazy', but knowing how difficult it is to land and mantain game dev jobs within the industry that is almost always not the case. In the vast majority of situations its decisions from higher management and usually waaay too short time frames or resources to ever produce a successful product. GSG is such a small team and no doubt the time frames were ridiculous to rework and test three entire games. Awesome analysis 👍
Not always management. Sometimes you have arrogant developers who think 'oh yea I can definitely get that done in 6 months. Hell I think we'll have it done in 3!'
The worst thing about GTAIII today is the small interactive bubble around your character. Cars vanish into thin air when you look the other way for a second. It sometimes seriously interferes with gameplay , like in the frenzies where you have to blow up a number of cars. If the remasters increased the interactivity range I'd be willing to look past lots of the other issues.
I get wanting to blame Grove Street Games for all of this but just hearing all of this and how many people were working on this it just falls on Rockstar games. You would think a billion-dollar company could send more people or more care about a remaster of three of their best games and yet they just didn't care. Unless a GTA has V in it, they are just side projects.
They removed the Original Games of GTA games from Steam and others I am NOT playing the remastered editions of these three; I luckily was able to get a copy of the first gta games from g2a the non remastered versions
Yeah, this video nailed everything perfectly and I was nodding along throughout. I was so hyped for this trilogy, but was starting to suspect something was up as the release date loomed (barely any gameplay released, the pedigree of Grove Street Games) and sadly I was right. I do feel somewhat for Grove Street, as while they undeniably put out a bad product, Rockstar are really the lazy money-grubbing villains of this scenario. At least they're fixing things, but soooooo much of it should have been in at launch! If Rockstar had given GSG more time and money to work with, and maybe even released some of their own developers from the GTA Online mines to help out.. who knows. At any rate, GSG were put in a bad situation and perfectly positioned as the scapegoats, though thankfully Rockstar is taking a ton of heat too. Also, I followed the launch on Reddit and it was sad seeing so many people claiming that it was a good remaster and jumping down the throats of anyone who criticized it, often with the line "IT'S A REMASTER NOT A REMAKE" and ignoring the fact that it's a buggy, unfinished mess that in so many ways is worse than the originals. Nothing against anyone who's sincerely enjoyed it, as there are some improvements, but so many of those posts reeked of denial. It was like Shelbyville Homer pretending that he was enjoying eating the lemon. And hoo boy, Jack Thompson. Talk about a relic from a bygone era. Back when the villain of the videogame industry was some batshit insane ambulance chasing asshole and not the videogame industry itself.
One mighty keef made joke how they called nintendo on how to make money with little effort, but the sad part is it would have been better if they did do exactly as nintendo did and just made the ports as is (like 3d allstars) and not tried to update the visuals.
I will never forget not even 24 hours after release, VargSkelethor managed to corrupt his game file by making CJ drink too much soda.
Sprunk'd it!
@Fat Chocobo funi swef
sprunked it
You guys are the AIDS of the fan base. That bug has been in SA since 2004 on PS2 because it’s an 32 bit integer overflow.
@@cardioandfriends who cares? just play the game
“They’re all bad.”
- That’s the kind of in-depth information I’ve come to love and expect from Digital Foundry.
The best thing about this bit is that it kinda mirrors one DF did themselves in their GTA 3 analysis video. Something along those lines:
John: "So I'll call Richard now [he hadn't appeared in the video up to that point] and ask him: Richard, which version should one play?"
Richard: "No."
And that was it, Richard never appeared again in that video.
@@50Personas the legendary Ledbetter
This is one of those stories where I knew all the details going in, because I was just there, watching in real time as a game, and multiple companies, just slip, fall on their butts, break their hip, and then poop themselves within seconds.
I'm so disappointed, yet somewhat actually impressed to see a failure happen this quickly. Usually it happens over months/years prior or after, but in a span of weeks... Rockstar, you keep on breaking records in more ways than one!
Its like he said, it was supposed to be a "slam dunk" I am sure none of the managers that approved this did any research on what assets they had left, or how hard it be to port to UE4. I am not defending Rockstar, but pulling the trigger before quarterly statements is standard practice:P
@@myfatassdick GTA is Rockstar's flagship series and the two brands are inseparable; it doesn't matter that Grove Street was the developer doing this work, these remasters ultimately make Rockstar look bad
Rockstar let this happen: there's a lot more people working for any of Rockstar's other studios than there are at Grove Street, so maybe they should have offered more material assistance if they wanted to avoid this disaster
@ according to your nickname, you definitely are
@@AkiKimurr good one.
@ The bait on that hook is looking mighty tasty, good work
If you listen to GTA radio channels, they make fun of corporate practices….so Rockstar behaving the way it currently does is really a monstrous journey of becoming something it once hated. I have very little faith for further installments of the franchise.
Amen, brother. But I can’t say I’m surprised. Once you hit the kind of success R* has, I feel like that just happens. Sucks. Red Dead 2 was amazing so hopefully this just a setback, I really hope.
💯% Agreed
Sometimes, I wonder if all the anti-corprate stuff in rockstar games are the writers cry for help.
gta 6 is the only hope
@@inurokuwarz Lol. That would be great; hidden messages on the radio stations.
I'll never understand why rockstar or grove street don't just buy the updated assets that the modders have spent YEARS creating. I'm sure the modders would be more than happy to put their work in an official game, plus, they'll make money! Most of the work is already done!
Ego, I guess
Money
My modded game is infinite times better than DE, not even capping
@@steveweast475 fr the graphics mods I downloaded look 100x better than the DE could ever hope to achieve.
@Samuel Giam Rockstar: names their biggest franchise after a felony, is stricter on its players than Ninfuckingtendo.
Even by corporate greed standards, the whole Definitive Edition debacle was an absolute dumpster fire. The sheer arrogance and stupidity to force an underprepared studio to cobble up a quick rehash of some of the most beloved titles in history within a ridiculously tight deadline is just mindblowing. Like Matt said, releasing these games once every year for say $30 / piece would've been so much more profitable in the long run.
But nobody cares about the long run anymore, it's crazy.
These companies have been so fixated on loot boxes and crappy mobile cash grabs the last several years that it seems they've forgotten how to make games. You wouldn't think it but there was a time when even the Triple A companies took pride in their franchises and their libraries of games, those times are long gone now and it's only getting worse..
Grove street games underprepared?
they already worked on it before and triped on the same rock in an even more clusterfuckery way,
maybe if they didnt abandoned the old port they could had fixed it overtime and actually make a good port then they could have had a great base for the definitive
edition
The reason why is because most corporate positions nowadays are based on generating short-term profits. You pull off something that makes a quick buck and you get promoted or find a higher paying position in another company.
So many corporate executives are looking at something to churn out a quick buck with no regards for long lasting consequences. All the people above them see is they spent X amount and they got Y amount in profit which is a profit margin of Z and therefore they are promoted.
That's why you're seeing so many corporations making really dumb and short-sighted decisions. Crank out a shoddy profit, make a quick profit, and let the next poor bastard deal with the fallout.
This is a fundamental problem with the way capitalism manifests in modern society.
Quartly profits are all that matters, nobody considers the long term damage to corporate reputation.
That's why preordering is a bad idea.
Just wait until the prince of persia remake comes out it will make this game look like a masterpiece.
This is probably the shortest time a game went from being released to being wha happun'd
What about Balan?
Deserved i really wanted this analyzed
@@noneofyourbusiness1998 This was literally like a month, Balan was like 5
And I hope it would remain that way. I mean, can you imagine an even bigger fuck-up than GTA Trilogy? So bad, that Matt will upload an episode two days after the game's release? I don't want to live in that timeline tbh.
Cyberpunk was also pretty quick
Dang, haven’t seen a hd remaster/ definitive edition get received this badly since the infamous Silent Hill HD collection.
Warcraft 3 Re-forged
@@MattMcMuscles I honestly forgot about that one.
At least the ps3 version had a patch that ironed out some of the bugs...
@@ratchetxtreme6591 YOU KNOW A REMASTER IS BAD WHEN YOU FORGET THE WHOLE ASS GAME
Ratchet Deadlocked on PS3. The DIGITAL version specifically.
Bad framerate, constant twitching in cutscenes, bugs, and screwed up models in some sections (Vox's teeth and the infamous zoom-in on Ratchet's face)
What do you get when you punish modders in a misguided attempt to sell a piece of shit? What you fucking deserve.
damn right
couple million dollars probably
@@Mirandasiwillja they easily spent that much on marketing it lol they lose
@@ocdc3261 no, they made a good bit of money, the gamers lose.
@@channel45853 Maybe you lost 🤷♂ I didn't buy it. That's all that matters to me, is that they didn't get my dollar.
How could I forget Jack Thompson? He tried to sue Maxis so many times he had his law license revoked in two states.
He was far too ahead of his time, he was trying to warn us about THIS abomination T_T
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines Yup! Always remember, conservatives are the REAL progenitors of "cancel culture." It was always Fox News who was pushing the "video games turn kids violent" narrative despite zero evidence. Then there's the weirdos who burned Dixie Chicks albums simply because one of them said she wasn't satisfied with W. Bush.
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines I was wondering about that, since when I made an edit to correct a typo, the edit didn't show up.
he saw the future and we all ignored him 😔🙏
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines Jack Thompson is just the opposite of Anita Sarkeesian... ones a liberal who wants everything censored and is triggered... the other is a conservative who whats everything censored and is triggered
@21:45 As someone who has been doing QA for over 9 years, just wanted to say thanks for what you said in regards to this game's QA. It does bug me (no pun intended) sometimes when I see comments asking "did they not even test this?!" or that "unexpected technical issues" comment from Rockstar. Mainly because not only would Grove's Street QA have raised red flags, but Rockstars own QA would have done the same when they recieved mile stone builds of the game, so they knew full well the state of the game but still decided to make Grove Street keep to that deadline. So thanks again for speaking up for QA in general and I look forward to the next video.
Kinda cute that we think they even had QAs considering they just ignore the reported bugs anyway lol
"We're sorry you didn't have the experience you wanted."
@Potato King I mean one thing they like is money, so they probably just made their devs QAs as well to cut more cost lol
What blows me away is, the mods for graphics, fixes and whatnot for the original versions were far superior than what we received.
If I was in R*'s/TT's position to remaster, I would've instead contacted the mod authors and gave them lump sum + royalties, along with a plague somewhere in-game to honor all those who worked on the mods (with names etc.).
This would've been a huge plus, and done them wonders to get their credibility back that they've lost over the years with GTA Online and RDR Online (Plus lack of DLCs for both games).
Care about modding community that loves the game more than the company - check.
Care about the original content to the point where you hire/pay those that did the work for you and properly compensate them - check.
Honor the original content.
HONOR THE ORIGINAL CONTENT.
Ugh. It disgusts me how they unabashedly shit on Grand Theft Auto. Period. Full Stop. Then 'rewrite history' by removing the superior products, making it so torrenting is the only way to get it (sucks for console players). What sucks is it seems the soul of Rockstar is still in there, GTA V was alright (base game) and RDR 2 singleplayer was outstanding. But the body (take two among other things) is just.. rotten, and it's been seeping into Rockstar for decades.
Just a damned shame.
As someone who worked in game QA for a year THANK YOU for pointing out that these bugs 100% would have been reported and were just ignored. I've seen a lot of blame being pointed at a lazy QA department and it's been infuriating. Keep up the great work.
If I recall Matt actually was in QA too, not sure if he pointed that out by that point I havent gotten through this fully yet.
Gotta have some hardcore naivety and ignorance to think QA and devs don't know exactly how awful these products are.
This is GTA TDE, _what_ QA department!?
@@autobotstarscream765 Congrats on completely missing the point of the comment
@@Drakkel What's the point of even having a QA department if the bosses are just going to ignore them and rush crap out anyway? Just to have someone else to blame?
The most memorable footage of this disaster was when Vinesauce Joel crashed San Andreas by drinking about 600 cans of sprunk.
GTA SA: Sprunkrun any%
Sprunk'd it
Fun fact : that's actually a glitch that exist in the original console release, but it only crash, nothing more, you juste need to reload your save, it's the auto-save of the Definitive Edition (and mobile / PS360 ports) that corrupt the save since it always load at the moment of the crash.
"My heart don't pump no sprunk"
Classic Joel.
I appreciate that Grove Street isn't being trashed too hard. A team of 21 for 3 remasters for a massive audience of a beloved game is TOO MUCH. Rockstar, who has teams, who has funding, who controls deadlines and QA, is responsible.
Grove Street could have turned down the job or offered to alternatively do a focused remaster of a single game. Anyone in their right mind knows this kind of project is way WAY too big for a team that small to handle on a deadline. They should have known their limits. Yeah, it all leads back to Rockstar's poor decision-making with their own franchise, but Grovestreet saw dollar signs. Both are to blame. It's too bad because a lot of Grovestreet's work modernizing and updating the game's environments and visuals is lovely. It's a shame that the volume of work forced them to rely entirely on automated processes instead of using them where it made sense. Eventually these will probably be the ultimate versions of the games given enough time and mod support. But even now in Summer of 2023 they're still kind of a joke.
@@geeknproud321bro this was their golden ticket. Why tf would they turn the project down
@@benjamincox4211 Because it was CLEARLY way too big a project for them and their failure to deliver ended up nearly shuttering the company and getting them kicked off the IP permanently... Theyre responsible for one of the worst bellyflops in game development history. Anyone with even basic experience in games development KNOWS that the team they had was WAY too small for the project they bid on.
@@geeknproud321 like you said, anyone should know and yet rockstar still hired them. This is on them. No company will turn down a huge deal like that and it’s unreasonable to expect them to. This all comes from rockstar not wanting to pay their own team to make a good game
@@benjamincox4211 I mean that's actually a fair point. Rockstar also should have known better. They are veterans among veterans. But also Grovestreet overstepped their abilities 100%.
As tragic as this moment in gaming history is, what's even more tragic is the tons and tons of gamers who are like "wHo CaReS? iTs JuSt A gAmE, tHeYll UpDaTe It."
Further proving to rockstar that there is a market of dumb zombies gamers who will consume the most shittiest of slop.
"It's just a games" Yeah a game that cost $70 dollars plus tax.
And of course there's those who do enjoy the game but feel the need to brag that they don't have any problems because it's getting shit on. Like good for you but not everyone is so lucky. I don't nor can't buy these games but I can at least show some sympathy.
@@Saltedroastedcaramelyou sound jealous of people who don't complain about everything
or maybe they were smart enough to wait before buying it you big baby
@@blueprint7 found the bootlicker
@@blueprint7 That's cool and all, but nobody asked, coomer.
"Or maybe they smart enough to wait before buying you big baby"
*_I dOn'T nOr CaN't BuY tHeSe GaMeS_*
It's honestly impressive, the ability to deny yourself an easy paycheck. This should've been the most no-brainer, easy cash-grab release in years, and they managed to botch it this bad.
it's just doing it properly would have taken more than one quarterly period and that's all the execs care about in modern capitalism
It wouldn’t take longer if they had done one game at a time to they can triple/quadruple dip into customers’ wallets with the 3 remasters and then finished trilogy
@@truthwooph4083 not anymore, and i didn't have a choice in that in the first place. what's your point, corporate simp?
@@LilacMonarch be happy u're in a capititalist country, can't say the same for people in socialist country
@@michaellai536 say the same about what?
Matt is quite clever-he is set up for life. As long as there are video games,there will be video game disasters. Endless topics for this series.
Aslong as he dosnt feel burn out or feels like giving up like other youtubers sadly have done
Same with movies.
@@FLoridianJoshua true I was about to say that. XD
Also I think this type of video is where his skill shines. He knows the industry and is perfect for the job.
Yes and I feel things will only get worse as we go.
"Rockstar, what happened? We was like family"
"I got caught up in the money, the power... I don't give a shit. Oh fuck, man... I had no choice... I had to do it... I just see the opportunity. OH, when I'm gone, everyone gonna remember my name... Rockstar! OHhhh..."
"Damn, what a waste..."
@@kurtcobain279489 Then Take Two (AKA Tenpenny) Shows up
Even though you're using a changed quote, people really need to leave their nostalgia shelters and learn that companies aren't ""friends""
They warned us in RDR2.
"Just one more big score, then we can retire..."
Rockstar Games: I HAVE A PLAN! YOU JUST HAVE TO TRUST ME, GROVE STREET GAMES!
The issue about the music is that Rockstar didn't even try to renew the licenses, they just didn't care. The most expensive song to licenses as far as I know is Thunderstruck which goes for 750K so Rockstar could easily drop a million and still get the song, no corporation will never sell at a certain price. There is always a price. And the thing too is that if they had to remove songs, they could of replaced them.
19:18 is perfect. The way he falls through the map randomly and goes oh fuck. Perfect dialogue
The thing is, that glitch is in the original. My CJ was riding a motorcycle on the freeway when he fell through the map. He appeared back on the road but the bike was gone. Mission: Snail Trail.
@@DarkDreamsAndMoonlitNights never had this glitch happen to me once, the only time I fell through the map was when I was messing around with cheat codes and used the infinite oxygen cheat while driving my car to the sea, since you're supposed to start drowning the moment your car goes underwater and it starts floating a little underwater it never reaches the bottom sea level, but with this cheat on you just goes through land underwater and falls into the void, lol.
The most damning question is this....why do companies NOT better store and protect their source code? Isn't that a valuable asset to control?
Because they don't care for games like us
@@schemar17 they care enough to sue modders. So that doesn't track.
Because the industry is still fairly new when it comes to standards like this. Compare it to the music industry. How much old music is lost to time because they existed in a time before masters were treated like valuable assets?
A lot of studios honestly just don't think that far ahead and you almost can't blame them. Like, would Nintendo have really believed you if you told them the Mario game they're working on the 90s is going to still have people clammering for it like 3 decades from now, *and* think that investing in long term storage for all these source code files would be worth it?
@@charlesblasini2134 I think remaking games has been around long enough after the multiple ports that have been sold of this very game. The company NOT having the source code protected and at the ready is both the reason they fucked this up and a cost they pass on to the customer when they don't take their time to find another solution. You're a software company. Control your assets. It's a fairly simple concept for a billion dollar company.
You know that physicals theory actually makes a lot of sense. Last year in my local CEX the shelves were stacked with copies of Cyberpunk the first week of release, Rockstar clearly were learning lessons...just all the WRONG lessons.
I knew what corporates plan was right when I saw they weren’t releasing physical copies. This is exactly what people were afraid with this digital age these companies evil intent taking advantage of the consumer with garbage and take away any form of reimbursement
Big Smoke Reviews the trilogy;
"All you had to do was upgrade the damn graphics, CJ!"
In a nutshell: Rockstar wanted to remaster three giant games (with the prospect of having to remake them completely) without the cost or time needed for said undertaking.
Bravo.
Which is funny, because Rockstar never did the remastering at all.
@@AlastorAltruistGaming true
Crazy to think this video is a year old. Still one of my favorite Wha Happun episodes.
It always hits me that what happened to Rockstar is karmic justice to them due to what they did to they dedicated fans which do mods to freshen up and made they're games more replayable.
Karmic justice would be pirating this franchise named after theft after it tried to steal money from people in the real world. 🏴☠️
At this point Rockstar should just go back to their roots, take a break from AAAA feature creep and make a new Lemmings game (?). They even have the funds to add a fully licensed soundtrack, unlike the first game.
Lemmings is owned by Sony. So expect Abby to kill the Lemmings and Twisted Metal to be ignored again and again and AGAIN.
@@BigEOT3 and have people complain that one of the Lemmings is gay or some shit
Why do that when GTA online is easier and makes more money?
@@BigEOT3 Now that’s some fresh information I didn’t know before. Lemmings was just a bit on my mind recently because of a newish video that talked about its public-domain soundtrack. The mere fact that the same studio that made it would end up creating GTA is astonishing.
@@salkjshaweoiuenvohvr because business is hard y'know?
This is one of the few situations where I'd have no issue pirating the original versions of the game. If Take Two isn't going to let us purchase the objectively superior originals, then yargh maties!
Yarrr, let the Jolly Roger fly loud and proud! 🏴☠️
And hopefully we can find safe Russian sites still hosting the HD mods, if one piece's HD vehicles aren't available then it's war crime time
Funny enough, I'd been meaning to play the original GTA 3D trilogy for years and never got around to it. When the definitive versions came out, I saw how bad they were, and I saw that the originals had been delisted, I immediately pirated GTA 3 in my first act of piracy ever. I regret nothing.
@@Chewberto This is literally a villain arc, good on you lmao
Argh, sail the seas, find copies for free!
It's actually shocking that a company like Rockstar Games, who's swimming in money thanks to what GTA V and GTA Online still bring in monthly, couldn't be arsed to put some resources into remastering some of their most beloved games and had it outsourced, with 90% of the world "improvements" being done by a faulty AI.
"To bE FAir tO rOckStAr GaMes, tHinGs aReN't ChEaP!"
Those would be the words that R*/Take-Two Drones would use while trying to excuse the utter short-sighted incompetence of a multi-million dollar company not putting aside a good amount to give remasters of their classic titles the premium treatment.
This was fantastic as always and I totally agree it should have been GTA 3 alone. It would have stood a chance at being decent. Rockstar has fallen so far from good grace. I won't even preorder GTA 6 in 2043.
Why did you even plan on preordering in the first place though 😂
No one cares for gta3.
@@elmedico3717 I mean…not any more dude. Like yeah, back then it was the shit and the one that basically “started it all” but it’s pretty forgettable when you compare it to the ones that came after.
Production on GTA 6 will be completed by 2069
@@clarenceboddicker6679 nice
as a silent hill fan, i feel a deep kinship with the poor gta fans enduring this rn. you are not alone, brothers and sisters. welcome to the hd remaster ranch [written in comic sans]
I still forget on occasion that they legit did that for silent hill…
All the more reason I still have the originals on the ps2.
Imagine wishing desperately to play the originals and to enter the fan base, but can't because they're nowhere online, and the originals are $100 used.
COMIC SANS?!?!
You know this Wha Happun is wild when the video clocks in at half an hour (not that I'm complaining).
The animated intro to this show is fucking insane lol. I can't believe how nobody commented that yet.
_"We then took advantage of the effects in the new renderer, which enabled us to do far more than add a new lightning effect here and there."_
And it shows. It really does. Like how they made the rain look infinitely worse.
That's been fixed. In fact almost all these issues have. This video is about 2 weeks too late. Rockstar stepped in and took over from Grove Street Games and got it up to scratch. The rain is good, the fog is back and the bugs are gone.
@@martinkeys3717
Ok shill. Yeah, I see you trying to outdate the outrage. 😒
@@martinkeys3717 He addressed that in the video so it’s not late
@@martinkeys3717Do you still lick boots? How's that working out for you?
It's honestly kind of endearing how far the video game industry has come and yet we are still witness to complete utter failures at this degree from highly respected publishers. The experience of being able to laugh at this colossal dumpster fire is A LOT more valuable than some halfway competent cash grab remaster that comes and goes without anyone noticing.
Now that I know the studio had 21 people I’m frankly surprised the games work as well as they do. That’s 7 people to port each game, about 1 person per game per platform lol
I like how Microsoft put the San Andreas version on Gamepass as soon as it released. Like they were trying to tell us “look, don’t pay for this shit”
And I thank them for it.
They still pay them a cut of your subscription fee
@@JM-dq7xn I’m more concerned about wasting money that could be used on a product with an actual level of quality.
@@Lagomorph27 I played it on gamepass, I still regret it
It really sucks. I've never played a GTA before, so i thought this collection would be a good place to start. Then this happens.
Pirate the original games. Piracy is the boycotter's best friend.
@@dmenor11ification Yeah i concur. This is not worth supporting. if you buy this then its basically rewarding greed. Only time i think its ok to buy is if they fix the Toy Story face models to something more real as the originals were, basically so GTA doesnt look like a Pixar movie basically
FWIW, the original PC San Andreas is my favorite next to GTA V
They've been fixed now. This video is about 2 weeks too late
@@Gatorade69 hell you can even get gta sa ps2 graphic and looks the pc version is the most famous version of sa because of mods
The definitive edition was already finished long ago. It was completed by the mod community.
Getting in contact with a bunch of respected modders and officially paying them to remaster the 3 games would have probably been a better idea lol
What they should have done is follow the Halo Master Chief Edition concept and sell them all together, but release them one at a time
Would have given them the time to get it done, and gotten people invested in sticking around
All I want in a modern game is to have it well polished AT release, have most of its content at launch instead of cutting a chunk of it for paid DLC, and no bullshit microtransactions that give you an advantage over other players online.
It's like I'm asking for the impossible with these expectations
Of course, since a simple one-time purchase doesn't give these piece of shit companies all the money in the world that they so want.
Just buy indie games. Much more polish for a fraction of the cost.
Yeah, it's not as if Doom Eternal, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Resident Evil Village, Returnal, Monster Hunter World, Horizon Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, Halo Infinite, Stray, Guilty Gear Strive, Forza Horizon V, Pokemon Legends Arceus, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Final Fantasy Origins Strangers of Paradise, Bravely Default 2, Metroid Dread, and, oh, yeah, a little somethin-somethin called *Elden Ring* came out in just the last three years. All of those from platform holders or major publishers, btw; I'm not even going to begin to list the litany of indie hits.
By all means, enjoy funny looks at the foibles of projects that went awry. But don't let that confuse you about the amount of absolutely fantastic new releases we get every year.
It's amazing how the bare minimum that we 90s and 2000s gamers got it's too much to ask in the current year. And the buggy messes we made fun of are now the standard in the industry
_"I'll have two number 9s, number 9 large, number 6, with extra dip, number 7, two number 45s, one with cheese, and a large soda."_
*~ Big Smoke in 4K quality edition*
"All you had to do was following the DAMN train, CJ!"
Thats the kind of turn around i was expecting from you on this. After hearing this explanation oh the graphics overall, I get it. It’s artist syndrome in that you see ways to make things “better”, but you commit to a level of consistent quality you can’t maintain
By focusing more on the graphics for a game, collection, the gameplay should never be tossed asides, they could have tested the trilogy, delaying it until it is more solid, 60 euros for a broken mess is unacceptable.
Edit: 60 euros remains too much expensive for a game or "collection" alone, but it's way worse when the final product is a broken mess.
This makes me appreciate Mass Effect Legendary edition that much more. They didn't take their original versions down either
The ME remasters had the decency to go back to the original engine the trilogy used - which is Unreal. Kinda surprised me how great they are, considering I thought Bioware - or really EA - would fuck it all up again like they did with Andromeda by mandating they use Frostbite or some shit. Leave it to Rockstar shortly after a stellar release with RDR2 and who sees GTA as their own identity to completely screw everything up.
Makes me appreciate Nier Replicant ver 1.2247. not only did it enhance the gameplay of the original, but added new content and ending that was very touching and bittersweet.
@@thepaintingbanjo8894 Remember, EA actually _likes_ money. 🦀 💰
Anthem * cough cough*
@@bearerofbadnews1375 These so called "remasters" will be so perfect if the company behind it actually realized it's a beloved franchise for many and not just an easy cash grab.
Something that bothers me is people keep calling the models “AI upscaled” when it’s really lazier than that. It’s just a smoothing modifier in every standard 3D software. Okay I actually can’t confirm without looking at the original models but I highly doubt there’s a functional AI for 3D model upscaling.
idk man, ive seen the original gta sa models quite a lot(at least the mobile ones, as that is the only version i own) and it REALLY does seem like they merely smoothed out the polygons or what have you, with nothing more.
I don't know if you'll see this but I've been watching your channel for a while and this is definitely the best video you've done in a long time. And I'm not trying to say that your other videos have suffered lack of quality or something... You just did an excellent job with the research here and there was some really funny stuff in here that really made me chuckle. I always enjoy your content but this video was like the Oscar winner for 2022. Cheers.
ah yes removing the better older versions of a game and saddling your customers with an inferior "remastered" version
i think its colloquially known as "pulling a Blizzard" and it worked out soo well for them
A What Happened on American McGee's Alice would be poignant considering he released the story outline of the next game he wants to do, stating that EA just doesn't want anything to do with the IP, but doesn't want to sell it either.
And/Or Parasite Eve. I loved the first two games, but BOY did the 3rd one fall flat on its face.
Ya looking back to when i played Madness Returns, it felt pretty mild and toned down compared to the first game. I figured it was just that many years since the first game, it was probably a different company etc. imagine if they made it sooner by the same people who made the first game.
I would be more interested in McGee’s Bad Day LA
It's honestly disheartening. With all of the public criticism and discussion over the declining state of much of the industry, instances like this feel like they're becoming more and more common. It makes me feel completely powerless.
We need another 1983-style industry crash. It won't get better until it all burns to the ground.
@@chemergency The industry is too large and diversified to make that happen again, but you could primarily buy decent indigames like Darkest Dungeon, Rimworld etc. Its just the big titles that get ruined by coporate decisions (especially when they can have microtransactions) and even in this field there are still some great games like Anno 1800. It's just incredibly disheartening when it hits a franchise you like. I own all GTA games (got the first one in 1998) except for this definitve peace of crap. My heart is bleeding.
Well
Become a pirate
Mainstream can literally burn itself to the ground for cash. Just buy indie games, where the devs there actually care about you and make you feel "powerful".
I feel bad for Grove Street. 21 people told to remaster 3 different games with as little time as they were given.
This is all Take Two's responsibility and they failed.
Good i kept all the original disk versions of this game. Never underestimate physical media in a digital era.
Rockstar just wasted their entire reputation in a month
Quite impressive tbh
Blame Take-Two for this
@@LegendsForever206 I blame everyone involved. It's not like this is the first shitty move by Rockstar.
People will still line up around the block to buy anything they put out.
@@LegendsForever206 Why are Rockstar not also culpable?
@@jamstonjulian6947 bc ppl still have hope that their favorite devs/publishers aren’t also greedy pieces of shit even though they are
See: CDPR shortly before 2077 dropped
Y'know, in retrospect, I'm shocked there wasn't a Wha Happun on Sonic Colors Ultimate when that launched (both for new game buzz and LE SONIC BAD views). But now I also kinda see that that remaster had a pretty similar story (giving the task to a smaller studio, having engine troubles and the publisher rushing the game out to have a release out this year)
I’ll be honest I knew things weren’t right when there was no early reviews and no indication of anyone having early codes. I was so hyped for this but the closer we got to launch, the more I worried… and here we are… at What Happun?
15:20 Employee count on LinkedIn is always an under estimate, because lots of people don't use LinkedIn (it's not a very good site). The company I currently work for has 13 employees on LinkedIn, but the actual count is 24, almost twice as much. That said, even 40-50 employees wouldn't be enough for making 3 concurrent remasters of already buggy games on a short time frame and then dealing with the backlash and the bug fix workload.
I still regularly play Vice City on my PS2, for years I've dreamt of the same game but with updated graphics and less clunky gameplay/shooting, it'd be sn absolute dream... but they made this.
"Props like bushes and fences were re-meshed and made solid..." Ahh...my old nemesis...the indestructible bush
Glad I got the original trilogy of this, when it was on sale back in February 2021.
Same lol. I bought the og trilogy literally a week before they announced the "definitive edition" and took them off the psn store.
any version you can buy online now is also crippled compared to the original product though.
Got it for PC at last year steam winter sale for cheap, also with re3/reVC project which run better on modern PC before taken down. For original GTA SA steam edition, sure it bit sucks too, but there's version downgrader to v1.0 (Hot Coffee friendly) along with Silent Patch makes it much more playable than this defective edition.
@@dmer-zy3rb this is also true
I have the originals too. Lucky thing too, cuz if they delisted them for the def. editions, I would regret not buying the originals.
25:28 "So it really behooves one..." (shows footage of horses and their hooves). That's exactly the sort of visual-script matching comedy I want and expect from this channel.
I love how San Andreas is a remastered version of a mobile port of an HD version of the Xbox 360 version of the game, it is so utterly bizarre and im not surprised that it is just terrible with all the most likely just spaghetti code and old code in the game
You've got that a bit backwards, the Xbox 360 version is also based off the original iphone mobile port
It's like when you put a sentence through multiple languages in google translate. turns into a garbled mess.
8:20 fucks me up a bit because I’ve seen these exact documents in person. Take two had the high quality model sheets and concept art for GTA III on display in Prague back in 2018… the hell happened to all that over the course of three years???
Something that bugs me is there are Mobile developers that handle remasters AMAZINGLY. Look at Feral Interactive and their remasters for example, they ported Rome: Total War to mobile a couple years back and released a Rome: Remastered earlier this year for it's 20th anniversary. Similar situation, different results.
Dunno Rome Remastered had its problems based on videos and discussion thatI have seen from the total war community.
@@rubz1390 Rome Remastered's problems stemmed from the source code they were basing it on. Atleast they didn't introduce major bugs, like GSG did with this. And they actively fixed bugs brought to their attention.
(Also They gave a 50% coupon to Original Rome owners, so their remaster of a 20y/o game only cost $15, as opposed to Rockstar's $60)
Let's not forget Christian whiteheads mobile version of Sonic CD made its way to console and PC as it's considered the best version of that game
What I love most about this video is that you released it exactly a month after the game was released
God, literally every second of this video is pure, unadulterated chaos. It really showcases just how badly Rockstar fucked this up
@@zherofhicksgiven3613 the worst part about this isn't that the "definitive edition" released in such a piss poor state (and probably still is in such a state) or that Rockstar delisted the original games, it's the aftermath of it all. With the originals digitally delisted and the "remasters" the inferior versions, any physical copies you can find will be marked up to outrageously impossible prices
GTA: The Definitive Edition is a “remastered” masterpiece…only to be shot down like Ricardo Diaz’s VCR player with Diaz’s favorite El Burro movie
It’s almost 3 years removed from the release of this thing, and I’m still baffled how they thought they could slip the whole unpolished and crunch-laden mess past the fans unaddressed. I swear business execs just see reality incorrectly
24:04 "Tuff nuts logo shape restored"
looks to me like it's still got all that detail on the inside LOL.
There’s a theory going around that Dan Houser wrote Red Dead Redemption II in a way that if you look at it from a meta POV, it’s actually about the death of Rockstar Games. After seeing this pathetic excuse of a launch and learning that Take-Two’s CEO is named Strauss, the same name as the money hungry loan shark in Dutch’s gang, I’m inclined to believe it.
Sounds a bit far-fetched, but I wouldn't be shocked if Dan Houser had a grudge while making the game.
Allthough the CEO's name is a hell of a coincidence if it wasn't intentional. Hmm...
Source for where you heard about this? It sounds interesting and I'd love to hear more
@@smokey3504 This is where I first heard it from: ua-cam.com/video/jAzgzlSNcnA/v-deo.html
@@officernealy Thanks alot
@@leithaziz2716 May explain why he left. Talented guy nonetheless
Even though the results weren't great, I think it's really interesting to use machine learning to upscale a game the way they did. I wonder if, given more resources and perhaps a smaller scale, that could be successful to a degree.
Other games have done it, modders have done it for some games. Textures, meshes, videos all successfully upscaled. Difference is they had the time and resources to have a human check the output and probably a lot less to check than 3 openwork games.
but sometimes the AI do not understand the art direction so sometimes it makes the textures too different from the original style
Modders have already used upscale to make textures that are infinite times better than the ones in DE
It has proven to be quite a powerful tool yes. Modders have used it with great success, however you *HAVE* to do manual touch-ups or even combine different parts of textures from different algorithms to make it happen.
Just dropping it in, crossing your fingers & shipping it to people is a recipe for disaster.
Oh it can work. The ME1 remake used AI to do most of the upscaling of old textures, and for the most part, it worked well.
I always knew this was gonna be a problem. They rebranded the former war drum studios right as they announced the game and I knew something was up right away. They did a terrible remaster of san andreas on consoles before so I saw this coming.
That final quote is the most damning possible thing that could have been said in regards to this disaster so thank you for including it
Ever since this game came out, whenever I feel down, upset or angry, I just watch glitch clips from this game so that I can have a good hearty few laughs to cheer me up.
@@truthwooph4083 I prefer the term "interactive comedy"
For being such a huge and prolific company Rockstar barely even makes games anymore. They are basically a dlc studio in this era. RIP Rockstar
yeah sadly.
RDR2 ? anyone??
wha happun is such a good show bc most shows like it are basically pure negativity but like. i genuinely feel like matt has a passion for games as an art so even when hes being relentlessly negative theres a feeling of love there, genuine interest that makes these videos so cool as he digs real deep into the history of wild dev stories
Yeah, same.
It's sometimes really infuriating watching other videos after watching wha happun because of, often, extremely misplaced blame
true! it definitely avoids the pitfalls of people that just shit on games 24/7 and basically try to be avgn clones
At least Cyberpunk was a new game, and had a lot of untested elements because of how ambitious it was, like sure, the game was rushed, but I think everyone has a bit of fault in how things ended up with Cyberpunk's original release (and the game is still fairly good, specially after the updates).
But this definitive edition is so obviously a completely insane heartless move for the Take Two Interactive corporation that I just can't help but laugh at all the madness.
Meh they are still both failures
@@GreatestHeroDeku no one said that its not
That’s a weak excuse. CDPR had plenty of time (7 years) to develop a game where cops don’t just spawn behind your back or pedestrians don’t just get on their knees when you draw a gun. They still marketed it as “the next generation of open-world adventure” before the game released and expected gaming news outlets to review their game based on their pre-recorded footage.
Both games had a disastrous launch - but in different ways. Rockstar made the release brief and didn’t promise a life-changing experience and a remake in the style of RDR2. They did announce that the old versions will be removed from stores. Their communication could be improved though, as well as their behavior towards some modders. CPDR on the other hand hyped Cyberpunk 2077 before anything was developed. It was a good decision to employ modders though.
@@VieleGuteFahrer they was making the Witcher 3 in that time. Cyberpunk start development on 2017
@@hathu5185 I know. That’s why it was a bad idea to announce Cyberpunk 2077 with a CGI trailer during the development of The Witcher 3. Rockstar probably started developing GTA 6 in 2013 and it wasn’t until now they’ve confirmed the development of the next title. Give them a few weeks or months and they will officially announce the game with a trailer that was actually recorded within the game.
This one still hurts. I'll never forgive them for how they treated these legendary games lol
Thank you for making the point about the release of this being WORSE than Cyberpunk and a somewhat unfair comparison. I've been trying to point that out every time I see it. Considering that modders have been successfully doing what Grove Street failed to do for years is proof that this was a worse disaster.
*Subsidiary of It Takes Two to copyright anything that has the term “Take Two in it” Corporation.
“Waits an eternity for DOA6 Wha Happun”
As soon as all the gameplay footage for this came out I got excited for this inevitable episode
Three recent remastered ports that one hopes would show how appreciative Rockstar is about their fans…though I suppose they do.
I'm revisiting this in 2024 while I am playing through GTA IV on my Xbox 360. Which in my opinion is the real definitive way to experience this game.
Thinking about it, I think I have an idea as to why they did the remasters all together instead of separately like you suggested. And it is licensing rights. The music specifically, they probably needed to pay rights for every game, and it may have been cheaper to do that considering it a single big game instead of doing contracts for each one separately
Jack Thompson wasn't the only one that rallied against the GTA franchise, years before that when GTA first came out there was an episode of 'Police Camera Action' (showing police arresting speed drivers) Where they showcased footage from the PS1 game and said it encourages/inspires dangerous driving.
Madness.
The devil works hard, but Matt McMuscles works harder! Man, this was fast! Hell yeah!
I'm SO glad I own the physicsl copies of these games.
Side note: Anyone else want Matt to do a Wha Happun? on FNAF: Security Breach? FNAF: Help Wanted (the dev team's previous project) was a powerhouse and was released to critically acclaimed reviews. It had few performance issues and bridged the gap between the books and the old games well.
This new game--like these GTA remasters--is a buggy, stitched together mess. Steel Wool Studios is an even smaller company than Grove Street (I believe they have 12 people), but we've seen what they can develop when they have the appropriate time and support. I'd REALLY love to know how much of a development hell it became after Scott Cawthon stepped down.
21:45
From that statement alone has pulled triggered Matt's QA experience, though it had me laughing seeing how Matt has to make a quick comment in response to that statement, it helped to assure that the QA department wasn't being lazy, especially when Matt has experience in QA.
Thank god i have matt to make me laugh at this dumpster fire of a release. Thank you for everything you do man
This is arguably the release that has pissed me off the most. It was such an unnecessary debacle but the sheer arrogance of releasing a product in this state goes beyond incompetence and transcends into being unethical. GTA3 is a 20 year old game that doesn't run at 60 FPS on current gen consoles!
Thats because of the engine. Rockstar for some reason never cared about a framerate Bigger than 30 FPS until the Pc Port of GTA V and the PC Port of RDR2. Not even RDR2 runs at 60 FPS on past consoles, and they could If they tried, lol.
Was a guy on YT named AstroSoup. He summed up current Rockstar pretty good. I forget exactly what he said, but it was along the lines of "Rockstar is like a literal rockstar now. Old, washed up, and coasting by on the success of their long gone glory days."
Fact is Rockstar used Grove Street Studio like a sweat shop to port these and that ain't right.
I feel sorry for the less than 2 dozen employees, the stress they must've been under and still are now to fix the mess despite Rockstar failing to support them appropriately, both financially and in terms of backup manpower which should have been allocated to the project.
If people started holding Rockstar accountable for their greedy actions and quit blaming companies with only 21 employees then maybe they would start giving us good games again. Yet y'all are actually excited for Gta6 (aka gta online part 2)
The same people very likely bought the recent Elite Dangerous DLC's. I'll admit they *scammed* me once and I refuse to fall for it twice.
Some of us learn, others return to the poison swamp to drink from the poison water constantly while whining they are poisoned. P.T. Barnum; the inventor of *the freakin' modern circus* states "there are suckers born every second" and that "a fool and their money are easily parted."
Great video and summary of the situation! I love how you acknowledge the issues coming from higher up rather than on the ground level. I often see people saying that the developers of games in situations like this must be 'lazy', but knowing how difficult it is to land and mantain game dev jobs within the industry that is almost always not the case. In the vast majority of situations its decisions from higher management and usually waaay too short time frames or resources to ever produce a successful product. GSG is such a small team and no doubt the time frames were ridiculous to rework and test three entire games.
Awesome analysis 👍
Not always management. Sometimes you have arrogant developers who think 'oh yea I can definitely get that done in 6 months. Hell I think we'll have it done in 3!'
The worst thing about GTAIII today is the small interactive bubble around your character. Cars vanish into thin air when you look the other way for a second. It sometimes seriously interferes with gameplay , like in the frenzies where you have to blow up a number of cars. If the remasters increased the interactivity range I'd be willing to look past lots of the other issues.
That was always the case with 3 even on ps2
I get wanting to blame Grove Street Games for all of this but just hearing all of this and how many people were working on this it just falls on Rockstar games. You would think a billion-dollar company could send more people or more care about a remaster of three of their best games and yet they just didn't care. Unless a GTA has V in it, they are just side projects.
I like how at 23:45 the tone of his voice when the car falls through the floor, makes it seem like he didn't expect it and was genuinely startled
They removed the Original Games of GTA games from Steam and others
I am NOT playing the remastered editions of these three; I luckily was able to get a copy of the first gta games from g2a the non remastered versions
This episode deserves an Emmy.
I’m glad you’re successful on your own. I was watching two best friends play years ago and my boy mat is still around
It's funny coz bugs like this were why Driver lost out to GTA years ago.
Yeah, this video nailed everything perfectly and I was nodding along throughout. I was so hyped for this trilogy, but was starting to suspect something was up as the release date loomed (barely any gameplay released, the pedigree of Grove Street Games) and sadly I was right. I do feel somewhat for Grove Street, as while they undeniably put out a bad product, Rockstar are really the lazy money-grubbing villains of this scenario. At least they're fixing things, but soooooo much of it should have been in at launch!
If Rockstar had given GSG more time and money to work with, and maybe even released some of their own developers from the GTA Online mines to help out.. who knows. At any rate, GSG were put in a bad situation and perfectly positioned as the scapegoats, though thankfully Rockstar is taking a ton of heat too.
Also, I followed the launch on Reddit and it was sad seeing so many people claiming that it was a good remaster and jumping down the throats of anyone who criticized it, often with the line "IT'S A REMASTER NOT A REMAKE" and ignoring the fact that it's a buggy, unfinished mess that in so many ways is worse than the originals. Nothing against anyone who's sincerely enjoyed it, as there are some improvements, but so many of those posts reeked of denial. It was like Shelbyville Homer pretending that he was enjoying eating the lemon.
And hoo boy, Jack Thompson. Talk about a relic from a bygone era. Back when the villain of the videogame industry was some batshit insane ambulance chasing asshole and not the videogame industry itself.
I guess we need Jack Thompson now.
19:15 Cue the bug montage!!! That was amazing especially the Oh Fuck when clipping through the world
One mighty keef made joke how they called nintendo on how to make money with little effort, but the sad part is it would have been better if they did do exactly as nintendo did and just made the ports as is (like 3d allstars) and not tried to update the visuals.