Announcement of Grand Theft Auto V Expanded and Enhanced
"Is this really expanded and enhanced? It looks no different then the PS4 version. They even showed the Deluxos at the end blowing people up even though a lot of players hate the futuristic vehicles."
— TheProfessional
At Sony’s PlayStation 5 digital event in June 2020, Rockstar Games announced that they will be remastering Grand Theft Auto V for a second time on the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S as Grand Theft Auto V Expanded and Enhanced. This remaster was scheduled to be released in the second half of 2021 before getting delayed to March 15, 2022.
Before The Event
Prior to the announcement, an unspecified game under Rockstar's name was listed on Amazon (alongside unspecified games from numerous other companies), leading many to speculate that Rockstar was going to announce a new game soon, and what game that would be. These listings were taken down shortly afterwards.
The Announcement
Most Fans have been waiting for a new Grand Theft Auto title ever since the enhanced ports for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC were released, which was in 2014. Meanwhile, fans of Rockstar's other games have been waiting nearly, if not over a decade for a sequel to games such as Bully, L.A. Noire, or Max Payne. The unspecified listing on Amazon along with Rockstar's presence at Sony's event led to fans getting hyped as to what Rockstar might announce at the event. Unfortunately for all of these fans, Rockstar announced a second remaster for Grand Theft Auto V, showing a "trailer" that was mostly just scenes taken from previous trailers (including the original trailer from 2011), with no visual changes whatsoever.
Over a year later, on September 9, 2021, Rockstar released a second trailer, revealing that the enhanced port has been delayed while showcasing "improved" graphics and gameplay. However, this trailer showed no actual improvements graphically or gameplay-wise, and what's even more pathetic is that the trailer contained graphical glitches such as Lester sitting in two chairs, and constant lens flares appearing.
Reactions
The announcement was met with mostly negative reactions from fans of the ''Grand Theft Auto franchise, as well as fans of Rockstar Games in general. This is the first trailer of Grand Theft Auto V to receive more dislikes than likes, with over 191K dislikes and 136K likes. Fans were disappointed because they felt that a second enhanced port was completely unnecessary, the fact that the trailer showed nothing new by reusing outdated footage, and that Rockstar is still trying to milk Grand Theft Auto V as much as they can before announcing a new game, even though the game was already 7 years old by then.
The second trailer was met with even more backlash, with many pointing out that the graphics in the trailer look worse than the graphics in the PC port as well as the graphical glitches present in the trailer. Other criticized aspects of the trailer include no visible changes in gameplay despite the trailer claiming so, as well as Rockstar using the character switch transitions as a selling point for these ports. The latter turned out to be false advertising as the feature never implemented to another playable character in a far away distance (not to be confused when you switch characters mid-mission in the same area position).