The original
Grand Theft Auto's Liberty City setting is undergoing a full 3D makeover through YoYo Games' GameMaker Studio engine, by the hand of one of its original developers, Michael Dailly.
While the franchise is best known as a 3D, third-person sandbox series, the first
Grand Theft Auto -- initially developed by Dailly and David Jones under the title
Race'n'Chase and then later picked up (and renamed) by Rockstar's Dan and Sam Houser -- placed players into a top-down, bird's eye view. Coming at the game nowadays can be a bit of a resistant experience to players used to looking at
GTA's detailed cityscapes from something closer to their protagonists' point of view.
Hence, a remake. Dailly -- who now serves as head of development at
YoYo Games -- is developing the remake independent of Rockstar, not so much for commercial purposes but simply to show off GameMaker Studio's 3D capabilities. There are no plans to reproduce the missions or to release the build to the public, although Dailly is sharing progress screenshots and answering questions over
Twitter.
"I'll release something at some point, but probably not with maps/textures," Dailly
explained to one commenter, stressing that since he doesn't own the assets, a full-on remake is impossible. "Although I could release the tool I wrote to extract them," he suggested.
