25 Years Later, GTA 3 Is Still the Most Fascinating Open-World Experiment

Grand Theft Auto 3 transformed expectations for 3D open-world games when it launched in 2001, creating a dense, reactive Liberty City that players could explore with unusual freedom. The retrospective argues that its technical ingenuity and approach to blending story with exploration still make it a compelling experiment 25 years later.

The game’s developers streamed about 130MB of assets through the PlayStation 2’s 32MB of RAM, using map streaming and design tricks to keep the city running with few interruptions. Its three islands drew on several American cities, while mission contacts and territory-based story arcs guided players through the map and its criminal factions. The supplied article text ends mid-sentence while describing the story’s later areas.