Following yet another controversy involving Take-Two Interactive and Rockstar Games targeting fan-made projects, the Liberty City Preservation Project, gamers appear to be firing back by announcing the impending release of their own Grand Theft Auto: Vice City unofficial remake.

Titled Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Next-Gen Edition, the ambitious mod from the Revolution Team is set to launch on January 25, 2025. A newly released trailer showcases the mod’s enhancements, generating hype among fans. However, while many are marking their calendars, the real question is whether the project will actually make it to the public or if Take-Two will once again step in with legal action to shut down a fan effort that has been years in the making.

Unlike the Liberty City Preservation Project, which simply ported GTA IV’s Liberty City map into GTA V with improved textures, GTA Vice City: Next-Gen Edition is far more ambitious.

Rather than just being a map conversion, this project completely ports the entirety of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City from its original RenderWare engine into GTA IV’s advanced RAGE engine. Think of it as a large-scale, community-made single-player campaign mod, except this time, players can fully re-experience Vice City with major technical and gameplay improvements inside GTA IV.

From vastly enhanced lighting and modernized combat mechanics to superior visual effects, Next-Gen Edition offers a far more refined experience compared to the original. There’s even an option to enable ENB for further graphical enhancements.

Based on videos uploaded by the Revolution Team on YouTube, the physics and character animations are also in line with GTA IV, making for a much more dynamic and immersive world.

The mod utilizes assets from multiple sources: buildings and weapon models are taken from the Definitive Edition, neon lighting effects come from Vice City Stories, and vehicles and character models are sourced from the Xbox version of Vice City. This careful blend of elements results in a faithful yet dramatically upgraded rendition of the beloved classic.

The original Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002) lacked an auto-save feature, but the upcoming Next-Gen Edition mod will include one, adding a layer of convenience for players. This alone is a significant quality-of-life improvement, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

In many ways, GTA Vice City: Next-Gen Edition is the true unofficial remaster that Rockstar has refused to give fans. Unlike the so-called Definitive Edition Trilogy, which was plagued with bugs, glitches and censorship, this fan-made project delivers a faithful yet enhanced experience crafted with the attention to detail that Rockstar seemingly abandoned.

The full story, cutscenes, collectibles, soundtrack, and even the original cheat codes have all been meticulously ported into Grand Theft Auto IV, making GTA Vice City: Next-Gen Edition a full-fledged experience rather than just a simple mod.

Given the sheer scope of the project, it’s no surprise that many, including myself, are skeptical about whether it will actually make it to its official release date. After all, history hasn’t been kind to ambitious fan projects, as seen with the H2M mod for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, which Activision shut down before its launch, only for it to be “leaked” afterward.

What sets this situation apart is that Next-Gen Edition is being developed by the Russian-based Revolution Team, as indicated by their use of social platforms like Telegram and VK, a widely used Russian app. This makes any potential legal action from Rockstar and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, far less effective, as enforcing copyright claims across international borders, particularly in Russia is notoriously challenging.

That said, if I were in their shoes, I would have handled the release more strategically. Instead of publicly committing to a January 25th launch, I would have announced that date but secretly released the mod days in advance, purely to generate hype and blindside Rockstar and ensure it reaches the public before their legal team has a chance to react with a cease-and-desist order.

Whether the mod makes it past Take-Two’s ever-watchful legal hammer or not, GTA Vice City: Next-Gen Edition represents something bigger, a defiant stand against corporate greed and the preservation of gaming history by dedicated fans who simply want to experience Vice City built inside of Rockstar’s most ambitious and advanced rendition to date.