When Rockstar North released Grand Theft Auto III back in 2001, it was set in Liberty City, which consists of three island based on New York. Liberty City was then revisited as the setting for Grand Theft Auto IV released in 2008. Now Liberty City is set to make an appearance again in Grant Theft Auto V, only this time it's not official.
The work to add the entire land mass of Liberty City to GTA V has been underway since Rockstar released GTA V for the PC. It's being carried out by the team behind the OpenIV modding tool, but it's not finished yet and there's no release date in place.
GTA V is set in San Andreas, which is based on Southern California. Rather than try to integrate Liberty City with San Andreas somehow, the OpenIV team instead decided to place it across the sea. That way, players will be able to visit it by flying there while keeping it separate from the core game and environment.
Here's the first teaser trailer, showing how it will look on approach:
Related
- Latest GTA V Mod Features Stunning 4K Visuals, MoreLatest GTA V Mod Features Stunning 4K Visuals, More
The mod will be limited to PC and only single player. In order to add Liberty City (which is huge) to the game you'll need to own copies of GTA IV and GTA V as well as downloading a converter tool for copying assets from one game to the other. The OpenIV team also confirmed the mod will work with Episodes from Liberty City, which was released as a standalone game consisting of a compilation of gameplay episodes.
The end result of this project will be the older games available in the GTA V game engine, which is sure to appeal to a lot of players. It's also likely to see a surge in purchases of the official games from players who only own console versions but want to try this mod out.
Hopefully it sees a release this year and Rockstar decides to continue its support for modding and just let it happen.