Yesterday, during a big PlayStation Showcase event that featured a bunch of new games like God of War Ragnarok, we got a new trailer for the next-gen release of Grand Theft Auto V. It wasnât very good, and the GTA community is letting everyone know about it. At one point on Thursday, GTA was trending on social mediaâbut it was almost entirely complaints from aggravated fans. It seems Rockstar has finally broken the GTA fanbaseâs faith and resolve.
GTA Vâs next-gen port, often referred to by fans as the âEnhanced & Expandedâ edition or E&E for short, was first announced in June 2020. At the time Rockstar was light (and vague) on details about what was going to be different about this apparently new and improved port of GTA V. All the publisher said was fans could expect âa range of technical improvements, visual upgrades, and performance enhancementsâ but the trailer that introduced the new port didnât really show much to support that. Still, the communityâs reaction was a mix of the usual jokes, hype, and demands for GTA 6
Fast forward over a year later. After 14 months of nearly complete radio silence about GTA V E&E, Rockstar finally releases a new trailer that⊠doesnât share any new details, doesnât seem to show an enhanced version worth spending more money on at all, and, to add icing on the cake, thereâs now also a delay for it. E&E was planned to come out in November 2021. Now itâs coming out in March 2022, nearly two years after it was first announced. This is roughly the same amount of time between Rockstarâs first GTA V teaser back in 2011 and its eventual (and first) release in 2013 on PS3 and Xbox 360. Even weirder, and frustrating to many fans as well, is how this new trailer still doesnât show us much in the way of enhanced visuals or go into any detail about what Rockstar is improving.
According to a new post by Rockstar on its official Newswire blog, this new port of what was originally an Xbox 360/PS3 game includes âa range of technical and graphical improvements across the entire experience â and âmuch more.â But many are unable to spot any meaningful differences between the new and old GTA V.
At one point, the trailer boasts of âseamless character switchingâ which is a feature that has been in GTA V since it was released back in 2013. Another part of the short trailer boasts about âexplosive actionâ but the novelty of said action has kind of worn off after nearly a decade.
The silliest bit of the trailer is after all this it mentions âAnd much more.â Yeah, I hope so! Because so far, Rockstar isnât just offering it as a free upgrade to current-gen owners.
Currently, the new trailer has more dislikes than likes on both the PlayStation and Rockstar Games Youtube channels. GTA-related Twitter accounts that Iâve followed for years are openly and uncharacteristically attacking Rockstar, sharing negative memes about the trailer, and openly mocking the portâs delay. Looking at comments on Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, and elsewhere, itâs nearly all negative. Even people I know who are generally positive about GTA V and Rockstar seem defeated by this latest trailer.
The thing is, Iâm not sure this trailer is the main reason fans and diehard GTA players have turned so uniformly and harshly on Rockstar. Instead, this situation is more like the straw that broke the camelâs back. Red Dead Onlinehas historically either been neglected, or worse, is barely playable. And after years of waiting for news about GTA 6, getting the billionth re-release of GTA V, and the growing resentment towards GTA Online, it seems that the PlayStation event finally broke the fandomâs collective spirit. Couple this with the stark reality that Rockstar just doesnât release new games very often anymore, and youâve got a recipe for an unhappy community. This is a community desperate for crumbs and Rockstar canât even be bothered to provide them with that.
The worst part might be that, likely, all Rockstar needed to do was to show the GTA logo and the number 6. Pull a Metroid Prime 4 and just tell people to stay tuned for more, eventually. Maybe finally unveil or tease the remastered trilogy that is rumored to be in development at the moment. The community is starving to such an extent that theyâd probably be ecstatic about mere crumbs, sadly enough.
Next week is the 8 year anniversary of Grand Theft Auto Vâs initial release. And with no news about whatâs next from Rockstar, itâs a sad and frustrating time to be a fan. But, hey, at least we will get seamless character switching in the next-gen GTA V port, whenever it finally comes out.
