GTA Inception: Vice City Played Within GTA III, Which Is Running Inside GTA San Andreas

A modder from the Grand Theft Auto community has created an experiment that seems straight out of a science fiction movie: GTA Vice City, running inside GTA III, played within San Andreas. Basically, the three complete games are run simultaneously one inside the other. The project is signed by Dryxio, who published a video showing GTA III running on a television inside GTA San Andreas. What initially appears to be a visual joke quickly reveals itself to be a true technical demonstration: the full title runs as a real-time texture, allowing it to be played from start to finish without apparent limitations. The most surprising feature of the mod is precisely the use of a real-time rendered texture. In practice, GTA III is not just a simple pre-recorded video shown on the television in San Andreas, but a playable instance of the Rockstar title that is displayed directly within CJ’s world. Dryxio then extended the concept to GTA Vice City, demonstrating that the game can be launched on a billboard while playing GTA III from the big screen inserted in GTA San Andreas. Within 48 hours, the modder raised the bar even higher: CJ finds himself in front of a gigantic screen in the cul-de-sac of San Andreas on which to execute the "matryoshka". To make it even more impressive, the games run as if they were actually independent. Each title is complete, therefore including the entire map, all missions, items, and more: it is possible to save progress for each of the three titles and resume from where it was left off. The result is a sort of Grand Theft Auto cubed, an experiment that condenses the historic Rockstar trilogy into a single visual and technical experience. Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas overlap in pure "Inception" style, where one GTA can be played while physically being inside another GTA. Clearly, this is a rather inconvenient solution to enjoy Rockstar titles, but still a really interesting development exercise. While we await the long-awaited GTA VI arriving on November 19 of this year, players can relive the chapters of the franchise that radically changed the concept of free roaming on consoles. At the time, GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas seemed like living cities rich in detail, capable of pushing the modest hardware of consoles to the limit. Today, thanks to this mod, those three worlds are compressed into a single experience, in an experiment that showcases not only how far independent developers can push their capabilities, but also and especially the level of performance achieved by modern hardware compared to the most popular platforms of the time.