Grand Theft Auto 3 Modder Shows How the Game Would Look With an Unreal Engine 5 Remake

gamerant.com:

One highly dedicated modder has shared an impressive concept video demonstrating what a Grand Theft Auto 3 remake powered by Unreal Engine 5 could look like. Their footage subsequently made the rounds on social media, prompting some fans to publicly reiterate their desire for a real Grand Theft Auto 3 remake.

Since its April 2022 debut, Unreal Engine 5 has been used for a variety of Grand Theft Auto remake concepts. Its popularity in this niche ostensibly stems from a combination of factors, including the vast graphical capabilities that it offers out of the box and the fact it is entirely free to use for hobbyists.

In another testament to that trend, YouTuber Flames Per Second has recently put together a concept envisioning what a GTA 3 Unreal Engine 5 remake could look like. The 11-minute video shows a stunning recreation of Liberty City using some of the latest and greatest rendering technology that Epic's popular engine supports. The demo includes overviews of many iconic GTA 3 locations, including East Monroe Avenue, the center of the Bedford Point financial district that serves as the game's equivalent of NYC's Times Square.

Elaborating on their creative process, Flames Per Second revealed that this impressive concept is essentially a heavily modded version of Grand Theft Auto 5 under the hood. The author didn't make it from scratch, but has instead relied on some existing community projects. Chief among those is Liberty City V Remix, which incorporates the GTA 3 map into GTA 5. Flames Per Second also made use of two projects by prolific modder DoctorMike, one to add a detailed Claude model to the game, and another to help elevate the concept's production values through the use of specular maps.

The vehicles featured in the video come from the Project FromThePast mod. Since none of this community content was originally made for Unreal Engine 5, Flames Per Second had to port it to Epic's engine. How long this ambitious undertaking took is unclear.

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