Players are finally getting their hands on Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition, and many are likely disappointed to see that the remastered games don't feature one of the games' most iconic camera angles during driving. The GTA Trilogy is certainly missing some features from the original releases, ranging from certain songs on each GTA soundtrack to cheat codes that Rockstar decided not to include in the remasters. While these elements being missing from the final product can be explained pretty logically (Rockstar losing the rights to songs from the original games, certain cheats being hard to use due to technical reasons) the choice to get rid of the Cinematic Camera angle in each game is a strange one.
Grand Theft Auto 3 was the first game in the series to introduce the Cinematic Camera, which allowed players to experience driving around Liberty City from a semi-random, somewhat movie-like camera perspective outside of the car. Continuing to drive for a few seconds would result in the camera shifting to different positions, like an overhead shot of the car or a head-on shot of the vehicle approaching the camera at random intervals. The Cinematic Camera gave the impression of watching a scene from a movie, which helped add to the large-scale experience Rockstar was looking to achieve with GTA 3.
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City didn’t really add any new features to the Cinematic Camera the following year, with Rockstar opting to reuse the same camera angles as their previous title. One great thing about the Cinematic Camera in both GTA 3 and Vice City was that enabling it actually caused less cars to spawn on the roads, letting players enjoy the feature without having to worry about running into another vehicle and breaking the immersion. Fans started to see changes to the Cinematic Camera during 2004’s GTA: San Andreas, with Rockstar providing different camera angles like a helicopter POV and viewpoints of pedestrians near the vehicles players were driving.
Cinematic Camera Isn't In Any GTA Trilogy Games
The evolution of the Cinematic Camera carried over into the subsequent GTA IV and GTA V, which saw players able to use slow motion and toggle during the use of the camera angle. Although Rockstar did bring the Cinematic Camera over into Red Dead Redemption 2 a couple years ago in an even more fleshed-out form, the feature is primarily a staple of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, especially when thinking about the original trilogy that made it popular. That makes it all the more strange that none of the games in the GTA Trilogy include the popular camera angle in any form.
When driving around Liberty City, San Andreas, or Vice City, players are presented with two different angles from behind the car and a first-person view for a more personal experience, and that's it. This isn't the first time that Rockstar has removed the feature from a remastered version of a GTA title, as both the mobile and console remasters of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas release in 2013 didn't include the camera feature either. It's certainly an odd choice by the developers not to include a feature that many fans enjoyed from the originals that made each individual experience all the better, especially since it prompted the inclusion of the camera angle in every GTA title following GTA 3 - and that this is called the Definitive Edition.
Leaving the Cinematic Camera angle out of the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition kind of feels like fans are getting shorted a bit, with Rockstar and Grove Street Games seemingly not willing to take the time to update the feature with the GTA Trilogy's moderately upscaled graphics and provide the complete experience for those who are returning to the trilogy or playing them for the first time. It would be nice to see the developers provide some sort of explanation as to why that particular camera angle (as well as the Top-Down view in GTA 3) is missing, or potentially add the feature back in a future patch. The likelihood of this happening is small, considering Rockstar's focus on the upcoming release of GTA V on next-gen consoles, but Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - Definitive Edition would be a more complete experience if that did happen.