Grand Theft Auto III

Grand Theft Auto III ( GTA III or GTA 3 for short) is the third game in the Grand Theft Auto series and simultaneously represents the prelude to a trilogy and its chronological conclusion. It was first released in 2001 for the PlayStation 2 , thenReleased in2002 for Windows . GTA III is the first game in the series to use 3D graphics. The third-person perspective is activated by default. Alternatively, you canswitch to the bird's eye view typical of GTA 1 and 2 .

action

GTA III is the first game in the series that can boast an elaborated storyline, which is told through cut scenes in game graphics. The story is based on classic gangster films such as The Godfather and Scarface .

GTA III is set in 2001 in the city of Liberty City. The player slips into the role of a nameless gangster who doesn't speak a single word during the entire game and who is only identified as "Claude" in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas . The player accepts orders from various clients, which become more demanding over time. The clients are the influential heads of various criminal organizations such as the Leone Mafia family (Italians) and the Yakuza (Japanese). Smaller jobs come from the leaders of local street gangs.

The game begins with a bank robbery in which Claude is gunned down by his girlfriend Catalina and arrested by the police. From then on, Claude seeks revenge on his ex-girlfriend. During the transfer to prison, the transport on the Callahan Bridge is stopped by members of the Colombian cartel and a fellow prisoner is freed. In the chaos caused by an explosion, Claude and bomb expert 8-Ball are able to flee from the police. He comes into contact with the Leone Mafia through 8-Ball.

Claude works his way up to the Don's personal assistant, Salvatore Leone , within the Leone family . Catalina has now established a drug empire in Liberty City as the leader of the Colombian cartel. The destruction of the drug laboratory by Claude threatens a war between the Mafia and the cartel. When Salvatore also learns that his wife Maria has fallen in love with Claude, Salvatore wants to kill him with a car bomb in order to keep peace with the cartel.

Thanks to Maria, Claude learns of the plot and can go into hiding in Staunton Island. From now on, he works with the Yakuza to kill Salvatore and gradually destroy Catalina's drug empire. In a roundabout way, Claude finally meets the media mogul Donald Love , one of the most influential people in Liberty City. Together with Donald, Claude starts a gang war between the Yakuza and the Colombian cartel. Lured from the reserve, Catalina has to intervene personally in the gang war. She kills the last of the yakuza leaders and kidnaps Maria to extort $ 500,000 from Claude.

Catalina doesn't play fair when the money is handed over at the Kartell headquarters and takes the money to the dam. In the subsequent showdown, Claude shoots down her escape helicopter and escapes with Maria.

Gameplay

The game mainly consists of a combination of shooting and driving sequences. The tasks for the player can be divided into three categories: main missions, side missions and free play.

Both in the missions and outside the missions, the police react to criminal acts committed by the player. The more crimes the player commits, the more police officers and other units will pursue the player.

The main missions make up the plot of the game and therefore have a chronological order. To do this, the player has to visit various clients in the game world. In the following short cutscene the plot is continued and the problem to be solved is described. The player then has to solve the mission with weapons and / or vehicles that he finds in the game world or has already found.

Side missions are not part of the plot and can therefore be performed at any time. For example, as part of a collection mission, 100 hidden parcels have to be found in the game world. Monster stunts require the implementation of long jumps with vehicles. With taxi missions you drive passers-by to the desired destinations. These types of missions do not have to be completed consecutively and can therefore be interrupted and continued later. In contrast, the fire, police and ambulance missions cannot be interrupted. There must be a certain number of the same tasks, such as B. extinguishing fires or killing criminals can be carried out.

The game follows the open world principle and therefore the player is not forced to turn to the missions. The game world offers various employment opportunities. For example, the player may intentionally commit crimes to obtain police pursuit or just to explore the game world.

The actions of the player in GTA III partially affect the game world. The killing of Salvatore Leone means that the northern part of Portland, especially the Saint Mark's district, can hardly be entered without the player being massively attacked by Leone mafiosi. The same goes for cartel areas, as the Colombians are heavily armed and therefore pose a great danger to the player.

Game world

The city of Liberty City is based on the city of New York and consists of three islands that are only gradually unlocked in the course of the game. The three islands are connected by bridges, a tunnel and a subway . An elevated railway can also be used on the first island . On each island the player has a hiding place in which he can save the game. By finding hidden packages or completing side missions, pickups appear there in the form of weapons, health and armor, which save the player time-consuming searching.

The city is comic-like and detailed and looks very lively due to the high volume of traffic and the variety of passers-by.

In GTA III , the player can choose from 50 different vehicle models that are based on real models. With one exception, the selection is limited to land and water vehicles. Only the "Dodo", a Cessna propeller aircraft with shortened wings, can be used for flight tests.

Gangs

A large number of gangs control the city. While some gangs are armed with baseball bats, others have micro-uzis and others have powerful weapons. A selection of the most important gangs:

Colombian cartel: They are distributing the drug SPANK and trying to gain a foothold in Liberty City.
Leone Mafia family: Claude's first clients are firmly owned by Saint Mark's. Your "Don" is Salvatore Leone.
Triads: The Triads want to push the Portland Mafia back. They run a mackerel factory as camouflage .
Yakuza: The Yakuza try to prevent Colombians from gaining influence in the city by selling drugs.

There are also smaller gangs, the local street gangs, which, however, are less important in the plot of the game. These include the Diablos , the Yardies and the Southside Hoods . Claude is given some side missions by her bosses that have nothing to do with the main storyline itself.

music

The player can switch between the radio stations as in the previous parts, but these have been greatly expanded in terms of quantity. Transmitters Flashback FM (the songs from the movie Scarface plays), K-Jah (Tracks of 1980 released album Scientist Rids the World of the Evil Curse of the Vampires of Scientist , original Jamaican dub ), Double Cleff FM (classic Italian opera pieces) , MSX FM ( drum and bass ), Game Radio FM (songs by hip-hop artists from the real music label Game Recordings ), Rise FM ( trance ), Head Radio and Lips 106 (both play pop , all songs from the two stations are their own creations from Rockstar Games ) and Chatterbox FM ( talk station with Lazlow ; callers can talk to him about various topics here, so no music, but spoken program). In addition, it is possible for the first time in the PC version to include MP3 and wave audio files, which are treated by the game as a separate transmitter. In the Xbox version, audio files stored on the hard drive are also treated like a radio station.

publication

The release date for the PS2 version was originally scheduled for October 2, 2001. Due to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , the developers decided to modify some elements of the game: The color combination of the police cars was changed to black and white, as the original blue and white was too reminiscent of the NYPD emergency vehicles . In addition, the character Darkel, which was still listed in the game instructions, has been removed. The amended version was finally published on October 23, 2001.

If the game is installed under the German country code, it is deactivated, i. H. There is no blood in the game, collecting money from killed passers-by and separating body parts is no longer possible. In addition, there are no killing missions in which as many gang members as possible have to be killed within a given time. In Japan, the game was indexed in 2005, two years after its release there, for glorifying violent crime. At that time, 350,000 copies had already been sold.

The game is not available separately for Xbox . Here you can choose between the Double Pack including GTA: Vice City or the Triple Pack including GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas .

Rockstar Games had GTA III implemented for Android and iOS by the development studio War Drum Studios in December 2011 on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the first release .

Web links

GTA III at Rockstargames.com
GTA 3 at MobyGames (English)
GTA III on the GTA Wiki
Grand Theft Auto III in the Internet Movie Database (English)

Individual evidence

↑ Schnittberichte.com: Grand Theft Auto 3
↑ Grand Theft Auto 3: Indexed in Japan - 4Players.de . In: 4Players . ( 4players.de [accessed on October 23, 2018]).
↑ Destructoid.com: Review: Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary. Retrieved October 18, 2019 .

[1] Schnittberichte.com: Grand Theft Auto 3

[2] Grand Theft Auto 3: Indexed in Japan - 4Players.de . In: 4Players . ( 4players.de [accessed on October 23, 2018]).

[3] Destructoid.com: Review: Grand Theft Auto III: 10 Year Anniversary. Retrieved October 18, 2019 .