Twenty-five years after release, Grand Theft Auto III remains the foundational text of the modern open-world genre. Here's what it invented, what it perfected, and what every GTA since owes it.
Twenty-five years on, these are the GTA III missions every fan still remembers — bank heists, betrayals, the dam finale, and the boat ride that introduced 8-Ball.
Banshee, Stinger, Patriot, Cartel Cruiser — the vehicles that defined Grand Theft Auto III in 2001, before customisation, before BMX bikes, before motorcycles.
PS5 & Xbox Series X|S launch — PC delayed beyond. Stay current with our daily intel.
Nine in-game radio stations and the talk-radio masterpiece Chatterbox FM — every Grand Theft Auto III station, ranked, with the standout tracks worth seeking out.
Released October 22, 2001 on PlayStation 2, Grand Theft Auto III is the game that invented the modern open-world genre. The 2D-era Grand Theft Auto (1997) and Grand Theft Auto 2 (1999) had pioneered the top-down crime sandbox, but it was the 3D-perspective III that turned the formula into a foundational text.
Below: what GTA III invented, what it perfected, and what every later open-world game owes it.
A useful list, because GTA III's omissions reveal what later games would add:
The inheritance list — what GTA III gave the series — is correspondingly long.
GTA III sold ~17 million copies on PS2, PC, and Xbox combined. It topped charts on every platform. It generated immediate moral-panic backlash (Senator Joe Lieberman, MADD, multiple US legislative attempts to restrict the game), most of which fizzled but established the political target Grand Theft Auto would carry for two decades.
It also single-handedly launched the open-world genre as a commercial category. Saints Row, Just Cause, Sleeping Dogs, Watch Dogs, Driver, Mafia, Sleeping Dogs, Saint's Row IV, Far Cry — every successful open-world franchise in the post-2001 era owes lineage to GTA III. The "GTA clone" derogation became a market reality because GTA III had created the genre other studios chased.
In a 2026 retrospective, GTA III plays as a foundation rather than a destination. Compared to GTA V (2013, twelve years later), GTA III is:
But the foundational design choices — wanted system, multi-island geography, radio personality, cinematic missions, vehicle handling — are all here, identifiable, and surprisingly close to what GTA V refines a decade later.
If you're a GTA fan and you've never played GTA III: yes, absolutely. Two reasons:
The Definitive Edition (post-patch) is a fine way to play; the original PC version is the gold standard if you can run it. Both ship with the original soundtrack largely intact (a few licensed tracks were removed from DE).
For everything to do alongside the campaign, see GTA III's Liberty City: The Three Islands Explained, GTA III's Story Primer, and the GTA III game hub.
