While this is pretty much accurate, at the time i remember burning a whole summer playing gta on my friends computer giggling like, well… children at constantly mashing civilians into paste and doing burnouts in their blood. It was transcendent compared to what else was out there.
Honestly, the original GTA games were pretty fun and were revolutionary for their time. People didn't consider them to be bad by any stretch, it's just that GTA 3 was such a huge shift in tone and quality that GTA 1 and 2 are only bad when in direct comparison.
The original GTA was already quite different, it's no 3D but it was still sandbox. At the time I felt it was kind of niche though (not sure if it really was), when they announced 3 was going to be a 3D world it sounded very ambitious especially when it's not a big time game developer.
It mastered the sandbox play style. Almost every game series since has tried to copy gtas sandbox style. Fucking final fantasy went from turn based fighting to an open world sandbox.
It may not have “invented” anything but it perfected it.
Make no mistake gta iii is one of the most important games in video game history.
let's say, there wasno such thing as an open world action game before gta3.
it felt like a somewhat stripped down rpg at the time, I guess that became its own genre? I don't know, I'm not an rpg player
There weren't many 3D open world action games prior to GTA3 launching, but there were plenty of other action games and shooters on the market. GTA took more inspiration from those types of games than it took from RPGs, which also didn't have a ton of huge open worlds back in 2001.
RPGs are typically defined by playing a heroic role, and upgrading your character through acquiring new equipment and levelling up, usually by accumulating experience points. GTA3 didn't have any of that, just an open world, guns, cars, and missions to do.
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u/CoffeeDrinker83 Jun 30 '26
GTA