GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas Became One Game Thanks to a Portal Mod

While fans around the world are scratching their heads over when Rockstar Games will finally release a new GTA 6 trailer, a well-known modder has done something longtime series fans might have only dreamed of—essentially stitching the franchise's three classic games together with a portal mechanic.

We’re talking about the talented modder Dryxio, who previously managed to get GTA 3 running on an in-game TV inside GTA: San Andreas. This time, he has unveiled something even wilder: in-game portals connecting the worlds of GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas. Playing as CJ, step through one portal, and you'll instantly find yourself in Liberty City or Vice City, controlling Claude and Tommy Vercetti, respectively. You can see how the mod works below, as shown on Dryxio's social media:

portals between gta III, vice city and san andreas

In the notes accompanying the mod, Dryxio also revealed how exactly the portal concept was built and how it functions. All three games run inside the same process, sharing one Direct3D device. Each portal is a live GPU texture, with the other game genuinely running behind it—Dryxio confirms it's not a video or a captured window. Walking through one swaps which engine has control while the others keep running in the background. If you shoot through a portal, the bullets can actually travel through and affect NPCs and vehicles in the other game. Each game still keeps its own saves, missions, and settings, and every world keeps running its own AI, traffic, and physics in real time. Moreover, while communicating with other X users, Dryxio also teased there is a chance a character—Claude, Tommy Vercetti, or CJ—could eventually drive through a portal into a different game entirely, essentially importing vehicles from one title into another, as you can check out below:

Do you think you could make it so CJ can walk into the portal and end up in GTA 3/Vice City? How about driving through it, importing cars from one game into the other one?

all of this is possible

The mod has sparked a huge response from fans, as it not only shows what a genuine version of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy—The Definitive Edition could have looked like—it's also an unconventional take on the "GTA multiverse," similar to such Marvel-related projects as Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, where heroes find themselves crossing into other dimensions.