A highly skilled modder shares a stunning concept video imagining what a GTA 3 remake using Unreal Engine 5 could look like.

A highly skilled modder has shared a stunning concept video showing what a Grand Theft Auto 3 remake powered by Unreal Engine 5 could look like. Their footage subsequently went viral on social media, prompting some fans to publicly express their desire for a real Grand Theft Auto 3 remake.

Unreal Engine 5 has been used for several Grand Theft Auto remake concepts since its debut in April 2022. Its popularity in this niche market seems to stem from a combination of factors, including the powerful graphical capabilities it offers out of the box and the fact that it is completely free to use for hobbyists.

As further evidence of this trend, YouTuber Flames Per Second recently put together a concept artwork imagining what a GTA 3 Unreal Engine 5 remake could look like. The 11-minute video shows a stunning recreation of Liberty City using the latest and greatest rendering technology powered by Epic’s popular engine. The demo includes overviews of several iconic GTA 3 locations, including East Monroe Avenue, the hub of the Bedford Point financial district, which serves as the game’s equivalent of New York’s Times Square.

GTA 3 FPS Unreal Engine 5 concept is a heavily modified version of GTA 5

Detailing the creative process, Flames Per Second revealed that this stunning concept is essentially a heavily modified version of Grand Theft Auto 5 under the hood. The author didn’t create it from scratch, but drew on some existing community projects. The most important of these is Liberty City V Remix, which incorporates the GTA 3 map into GTA 5. Flames Per Second also drew on two projects by prolific modder DoctorMike: one added a detailed Claude model to the game, and the other used mirror-image maps to enhance the concept’s production values.

The vehicles in the video are from the Project FromThePast mod. Since none of this community content was originally created for Unreal Engine 5, Flames Per Second had to port it to Epic’s engine. How long this ambitious undertaking took is unknown.

The YouTuber is far from the first content creator to imagine Rockstar’s 2001 hit game using Unreal Engine 5. Although some previous attempts have taken a similar approach using a modified GTA 5 as a base, at least one known GTA 3 Unreal Engine 5 concept was created natively, although it was not playable. As is often the case with projects like this, the latest video from Flames Per Second has once again called for fans to demand that Rockstar finally make a proper remake of GTA 3.

You can read our retro review of Grand Theft Auto III here.

Source: GameRant