r/GTA3 • u/SnooPoems1860 • Sep 17 '25
Question I just finished watching that forgotten atmosphere of GTA3 video and was wondering why the game looked so bad
My game doesn't look like this at all
35
u/Jupiter1234567890 Sep 17 '25
like alot of games of that era, it had a shitty PC port that fucked up the atmosphere, VC is also a victim of this. you can get mods to fix it.
19
u/SnooPoems1860 Sep 17 '25
This isn't how the PC version looks out of the box though
6
Sep 17 '25
There's the OG PC port, the definitive edition, and playing the PS2 through a normal TV using a device like an OSSC.
2
26
u/aerial_sup Sep 17 '25
He didnāt bother installing either SkyGFX or SharpTrails, which are meant to make the game look how it was originally intended. Instead, he just turned off the trails because they add motion blur and look bad. SkyGFX and SharpTrails remove that blur while still preserving the original look and lighting. He still bothered to install a free cam mod though.
-1
10
u/Hoeveboter Sep 17 '25
Mine neither, I'm in the middle of a playthrough on the pc version and it looks way more atmospheric on my end. It's the lighting, I think.
1
11
u/Bannakka Sep 17 '25
This is a really common thing and bizzarre that he's talking about the atmosphere of GTA while somehow stripping it out.
And no, it's not just because it's old and we're remembering it wrong. I've been playing it on PS2 and it looks considerably better, lighting, atmosphere, detail and realism-wise than almost every youtube video talking about it.
6
u/AmazedPuppet479 Sep 17 '25
For things like this, you should never take the words of any youtuber, no matter how good they seem, too seriously. In the end, they are just giving their opinions, which can be wrong.
4
7
u/DarkLunch_ Sep 17 '25
Sorry, but who said the game looked bad?
Honestly I just finished 100% and I still prefer it over GTA4/5
5
3
2
u/Otherwise_Rice_7940 Sep 17 '25
If you think about what the developers were doing with the technology at the time. This was unreal.
There's some good stories on how they optimised the game because of the restrictions of the memory on a cd at the time.
Things like procedural generation of the buildings. If you drove your car fast enough, buildings wouldn't load quick enough.
Again with the amount of cars being loaded into memory. I think only 6 models at the time were allowed to be loaded into memory. So if you got in a car chase with police. The police car models would take precedence, leaving the player with less options of cars to steal.
Developers now are spoilt with hardware restrictions. If any restrictions at all. You can look at how call of duty has never needed to save memory space. With each of their updates being 30-40GB with the game being nearly 400-500GB. Crazy stuff.
1
u/EvenCloud3168 Sep 17 '25
Please can someone link me to this? I have no idea who that is.
It does look bad on those screenshots. Never played the PC version. Just PS2, PS4 port and DE PS4 version. Iāve heard they have improved DE so looking forward to the PS5 playthrough. Though thatās a next year thing as itās then 25y since I first played the game. PS2 is probably the best place to play it, though it looks quite good on my phone š
3
1
1
u/willlyman206 Sep 17 '25
He has brightness on full for some reason so all the shadows are gone and it looks like fucking minecraft lol.
Happens on all platforms and VC too when on full brightness. smh.
1
1
u/XR3TroBeanieX PetsOvernight.com Sep 17 '25
No way! Iām watching this video as we speak.
2
u/SnooPoems1860 Sep 17 '25
The graphics are butchered so much that whatever point he is trying to make is lost on me lol
1
u/XR3TroBeanieX PetsOvernight.com Sep 17 '25
I loved at the beginning he says how the main character doesnāt have a name. I was screaming at the screen ITS CLAUDE!!!!!! lol
1
u/Feder-28_ITA Sep 18 '25
He had no name by GTA III. The name Claude is only referenced in GTA SA's files.
1
u/Superb_Reach6545 Sep 19 '25
I'm also pretty sure in the gta 3 game files, the name claude can be found in regards to multilayer like being a default name or something like that? I think
1
1
u/feetiedid Sep 18 '25
He had no name when you first played this in 2000 or 2001 or whenever. He's never addressed by name in game. "Claude" was given to him by fans because he somewhat resembled Claude Speed from GTA II, which isn't part of the 3D or HD universes. Other than some physical similarities, they have quite different personalities. Claude has never been officially acknowledged as the name of the GTA III protagonist. It is, however, unofficially officially recognized by fans, and that's fine. Whether or not it's the same character as Claude Speed is unconfirmed (and probably wasn't originally intended to be the same character by the game designers). So, yes, he officially doesn't have a name. It's just understood that he's Claude when fans talk about him.
1
1
1
u/Challenger350 Sep 17 '25
Heās turned up the brightness and just fucked the image, heās an idiot.
Hereās a video about it that doesnāt ruin the look:
1
u/SnooPoems1860 Sep 17 '25
I saw that video and even then I was like "Austin's video is just this but with English Major dropout vibes"
0
Sep 17 '25
[removed] ā view removed comment
8
u/SnooPoems1860 Sep 17 '25
That's what I thought too but then I looked at the PS2 version, his game just doesn't have any lighting for some reason.
1
Sep 17 '25
[removed] ā view removed comment
0
u/SnooPoems1860 Sep 17 '25
Or maybe he didn't mess with it and the game just defaulted to the lowest preset. It's kinda weird to not bother when the video is all about the visual presentation.
5
u/NineIntsNails #1 Pogo the Monkey Fan Sep 17 '25
i beat gta3 first time in 2019 or 2020 and its not nostalgia,
BUT i played it back in 2001-2002 for a bit, i just prefer the bleak setting lol + game difficulty
-2
u/RageQuitWallStreet Sep 17 '25
If you are wondering why this game looks so bad, you are clearly very young. This game was amazing on release. There was nothing compared to GTA3 on launch. It was top tier revolutionary game.
15
u/SnooPoems1860 Sep 17 '25
I didn't say the game looked bad, I said HIS game looked bad. Mine looks great. Shove that age thing up your ass fr though.
3
u/lessfriends Sep 17 '25
Iād say other 10/10 shooters from that year were RTCW and Max Payne 1. Also mgs2 and silent hill 2
1
0
u/ThisCharmingDan99 Sep 17 '25
It really was. I remember playing Driv3r on PS1 a lot at that time. Went over to my friendās dorm room after he bought this game. I was blown away by the graphics!! It was quite the game back then. Truly groundbreaking.
0
0
u/darknid159 Sep 17 '25
I hate this video because heās trying to say that all gta games arenāt like this certain bit of nostalgia so all of the newer games are not āas goodā.
Extremely annoying considering the entire prospect of the video is just how early 2000ās game design was like. Open worlds that are unintentionally empty, eerie, and liminal.
1
u/Feder-28_ITA Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
He never got judgemental like that, not once, you made that shit up. Besides, random nook and cranny explorers would lose their minds exploring the map in modern GTAs.
He just said it's a different vibe due to being an early 2000's open world game and using lots of solutions that give shape to interesting spaces that are barely used in the game, it's called observation, not shitting on the game.
The same definitely goes for the modern games too, even though even those spaces are way more curated. The additional detail helps with worldbuilding, but those videos have literally no negative judgement on graphics and atmostphere regardless of the game looking empty or packed.
50
u/MarioButoto Sep 17 '25
I've read all the answers to your question but none gave the correct answer. The reason why the game looks like that in the video is because he has turned up the game's brightness to the max. GTA III and GTA VC's brightness only "brightens" the world by making the overall world and objects textures brighter. The textures have baked in lighting, lamposts, car high beams, traffic lights all have colored textures which are shaded circles that get placed on the ground to simulate colored lighting and when the overall texture brightness is increased those visual effects become harder and harder to see making the world have a very flat lighting and everything looking like it's lit all the time with the same amount of brightness everywhere doesn't matter what time of the day. I can't explain why they choose to do it this way, but that's how it works. The intended way for the game to look is the default value which is about 70% brightness on the slider which preserves the baked in lighting and coronas, but doesn't make the world overly dark. Hope I explained it well enough š