GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition was supposed to give fans the ultimate versions of three GTA classics, but the massive outcry from fans instead brings to mind harsh criticisms of George Lucas's supposedly "definitive" Star Wars special editions. Unfortunately, Rockstar seems not to have learned from Lucas's infamous rerelease debacle, and the legacy of their early 3D GTA titles has been tainted in the process.
GTA: The Trilogy was intended to modernize GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas by updating gameplay and graphics. Then, after months of rumors and anticipation, it released on November 11 to an almost universally disappointed response from fans who said that the changes to the original titles negatively impacted the experience. The GTA: The Trilogy fan backlash mostly focused on buggy gameplay and ugly visuals, but controversy over the trilogy was expounded by Rockstar choosing to remove the original versions of the games from digital retailers. While Rockstar has announced plans to put the original trilogy back on the Rockstar Launcher for PC, the initial removal of the classic titles harkened back to another unfortunate remaster situation.
In 1997, George Lucas made a very similar mistake when he decided to significantly alter portions of his classic Star Wars trilogy in order to include the CGI effects he would later use for the prequel films. Instead of reacting positively to these supposed improvements, fans and critics called the changes irresponsible, unnecessary, and even offensive. For example, the Han and Greedo scene from A New Hope was digitally changed to make Han more sympathetic, weakening his overall character arc, and there were dozen of similar changes that received the kind of criticism that Rockstar is facing now.
It's not only the poor reception that mirrors GTA: The Trilogy's bad reviews; Lucas also made the theatrical cuts of the films difficult to access after the special editions were released. Outside of standard definition DVDs of the original trilogy from 2006, it is almost impossible to legally view the Star Wars films the way that audiences saw them during the first theatrical runs. The HD versions so readily available on Disney+ and Blu-Ray contain Lucas's alterations.
None of this is to say that the original GTA or Star Wars releases were incapable of being improved upon, but fans of both franchises are frustrated because it's no longer easy to access the exact games and films that they fell in love with. It's difficult to retroactively fix mistakes in a piece of art, especially after that piece of art has been consumed by millions of people. Plus, many of those people have rejected the biggest GTA: The Trilogy changes because those same "mistakes" are part of what made them fans in the first place, and the same applies to Star Wars. There's often a beauty to artistic imperfections, and the attempts by Lucas and Rockstar to scrub out those imperfections have led to remasters that are inferior to their originals in many senses.
While it seems unlikely that the untouched Star Wars films will be released anytime soon, Rockstar's plans to return the original GTA games to PC digital stores suggests that they are listening to the fan response to GTA: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, though it's unclear if they'll do the same for the console versions of the games.
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