You Could Play This Remade GTA Classic Before It’s Gone Forever
Vice City Stories.
As the wait for Grand Theft Auto VI slowly ticks on, the franchise’s active and antsy community has stepped up to show its love for the open-world series through various fan projects. While developer Rockstar and publisher Take-Two have made it clear that it won’t tolerate the existence of substantial mods for its crown jewel series, there’s no denying how impressive these community-led projects are.
The latest one to garner the internet’s attention is Revolution Team’s GTA Vice City The NextGen Edition. The mod is a melding of two of the best games in the series. It takes the unforgettable ‘80s vibes, Miami atmosphere, and rags-to-riches story of the 2002 game, and retrofits it into the physics-driven evolved gameplay of Grand Theft Auto IV. While this fan remake retains the iconic art style of Vice City, the new engine makes combat less stilted, cars are a little weightier, and the world more dynamic than the original game.
The Nextgen mod comes just a week after another ambitious and well-received fan project, the Liberty City Preservation Project, was removed after its creators spoke with Rockstar Games. As expected, Rockstar and Take-Two have already taken notice of the NextGen Edition, according to its creators. But Revolution Team is responding in defiance to what it considers “a cruel move” from Take-Two.
“Just two days before the release, Take-Two Interactive deleted our YouTube channel without any warning or attempt to contact us,” the team wrote. “A huge amount of effort and time was invested into the channel, including hundreds of hours of streams dedicated to the mod's development. Additionally, we lost connection with our international audience, which was a significant part of our community.”
The mod is still available, but the Revolution Team signaled that it’s preparing for a more explicit order to wipe the mod from the internet any day now. While The NextGen Edition was supposed to require a copy of GTA IV to play, the developers have made it free to skirt any legal issues.
Rockstar Games did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“It's a great pity that Take-Two Interactive blocks modding initiatives that aim to maintain interest in their iconic games,” the team writes. “Perhaps our project will serve as a precedent for the entire modding community.”
In this “Nextgen” mod, Vice City looks as glitzy as it did in 2002, but plays like an entirely different game.
While the NextGen Edition doesn’t replace the original in my opinion (it’s still worth picking up the now-fixed Definitive Editions on digital storefronts for that untouched experience), Revolution Team has created a novel way to revisit the second 3D Grand Theft Auto game. Especially if you’re someone partial to Grand Theft Auto IV’s tactile approach to gameplay and world-building, NextGen Edition feels like a long-lost remaster we never got.
As far as Rockstar and Take Two’s approach to these fan projects goes, it's clear that it's done more to hurt the company’s relationship with fans than to help it. But I won’t necessarily expect it to change anytime soon. As former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermij tweeted over the weekend, they “are a commercial company” that “will take down mods that interfere with their business interests.”
“There’s no point getting angry about it,” he wrote. “This is what companies are supposed to do.”
With Rockstar Games still selling their own remastered version of its 2002 classic, there was one ever one way this all could have ended.
From the jump, this was always going to be a legal minefield. Vice City has a bunch of licensed music. It’s also a remake of a game that Rockstar is still interested in selling to people. Convincing a company as litigious as Grand Theft Auto’s parent companies that this project wouldn’t interfere with its interests was an insurmountable challenge.
At the very least, however, it’s worth checking out the trailer for this ambitious remake. What Revolution Team’s has accomplished here is undeniably cool, even if that work is something Take-Two would rather you not see.
In the meantime, Rockstar is preparing its own return to Vice City. Grand Theft Auto VI is set to take the series back to the fictional take on Miami when it releases sometime later this year.
