Grand Theft Auto III

Updated 28 October 2026 · Fan site. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.

Grand Theft Auto III is the first 3D game in the series. DMA Design (later Rockstar North) made it, and Rockstar Games released it for PlayStation 2 on 23 October 2001 in North America. It is set in Liberty City, a take on New York, and follows Claude, a silent criminal out for revenge after his girlfriend betrays him.

Who is the main character in GTA III?

The hero is Claude, a criminal who never speaks. The game itself does not name him. His name was only confirmed later, in San Andreas. Other key characters include his former girlfriend Catalina, voiced by Cynthia Farrell, and the mob boss Salvatore Leone, voiced by Frank Vincent.

Story

During a bank robbery, Catalina shoots Claude and leaves him for dead. He is arrested and convicted, but escapes when the Colombian Cartel attacks the prison convoy. In Liberty City he starts working for the Leone Mafia family. He helps Don Salvatore Leone and destroys a floating Cartel lab that makes a drug called SPANK.

Salvatore later tries to kill him with a car bomb. Claude survives, kills Salvatore and goes to work for the Yakuza under Asuka Kasen. He then takes jobs from the property tycoon Donald Love. Catalina, now running the Cartel, kidnaps Maria and demands $500,000. Claude rescues Maria and shoots down Catalina's helicopter. The game ends on a gunshot that cuts Maria off mid-sentence.

How does GTA III play?

The view moves behind the player in a full 3D city. The three islands open up as the story moves on, and you can roam freely between the ones you have reached. Side jobs include vigilante, firefighter, paramedic and taxi work. The wanted level goes up to six stars. Some weapons allow first-person aiming, and you can shoot from cars. If you die you wake up at a hospital and lose your weapons, armour and some money.

How was GTA III made?

A core team of about 23 people at DMA Design worked on it with Rockstar in New York. It began on the Dreamcast around 1999. After Take-Two bought DMA in September 1999, the team moved to the PlayStation 2. Technical director Obbe Vermeij said the reason was the Dreamcast's poor sales, not its hardware. Rockstar also offered the game to Microsoft as an Xbox exclusive, but Microsoft said no. A planned online mode was cut.

Writers Dan Houser and James Worrall drew on crime films such as The Warriors, Taxi Driver and Scarface. The game uses Criterion's RenderWare engine.

What changed in GTA III after 9/11?

On 19 September 2001, after the attacks in New York, Rockstar delayed the game by three weeks. Police cars that looked like NYPD cars were repainted black and white. A plane's flight path was changed, a mission involving terrorists was removed and the box art was replaced. Rockstar said the finished game was "about 1% different" (Rockstar Games, via Wikipedia).

Release, reception and sales

Critics loved it. The PS2 version scored 97 out of 100 on Metacritic, tied at the time for the best-rated PS2 game on the site. The PC version scored 93. The main complaint was the controls. It won Game of the Year at the Game Developers Choice Awards and from GameSpot and GameSpy. In 2016 it entered the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

It was the best-selling game of 2001 in the US. Wikipedia reports about 14.5 million units sold by March 2008, of which about 11.6 million were on PS2. It was also the first game to earn a UK Diamond award for more than one million sales.

Controversy and legacy

The violence, the option to pay prostitutes and the attacks on police drew wide criticism. Australia banned the original release and allowed a cut version in January 2002. In October 2003, families of victims of a shooting filed a US$246 million lawsuit against Rockstar, Take-Two, Sony and Wal-Mart.

GTA III is widely seen as the game that made open-world 3D cities mainstream. Rockstar followed it with Vice City in 2002, GTA Advance in 2004 and the prequel Liberty City Stories in 2005. A rebuilt Liberty City later returned in GTA IV.

In 2021 Grove Street Games remastered it in Unreal Engine 4 for The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. That release launched with poor reviews over bugs and art changes. A fan project called re3, which rebuilt the game's code, faced a Take-Two takedown in 2021 and a lawsuit later that year.