October 2001General source · 2 sourcesWell documented
Grand Theft Auto III Reinvents the Open World
On the timeline · around October 2001 ·
What happened
Grand Theft Auto III moved the series from top-down 2D into a fully 3D, open city players could roam freely. A massive critical and commercial hit, it let players do essentially whatever they wanted in a living urban world.
Why it matters
GTA III is one of the most influential games ever made — it effectively invented the modern open-world genre that countless games have imitated since.
Sources
Related timelines
- History of Video Games → — The game that defined the open-world genre