During a Facebook Meta keynote event dedicated to its future VR projects and plans, the social media giant revealed that PS2 classic Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is currently in development for the Oculus Quest 2.
Earlier today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted the opening Facebook Connect keynote event that covered its various VR projects, the future of its own metaverse (whatever that is…), and how the company will continue to integrate VR into its various social media platforms and future plans. It was a lot of corporate nonsense and buzzwords, as you might expect. And for folks out there who don’t care about VR or don’t like the idea of Facebook being the company in control of some of the most popular virtual reality headsets on the planet, there wasn’t much reason to tune in. I mean, you did get to see this terrible digital avatar of Mark Zuckerberg that somehow looked more like a human than he usually does. So that’s something.
However, during a segment of this keynote dedicated to Oculus VR games, Zuckerberg announced that a version of GTA San Andreas is being developed for the Oculus Quest 2.
“This new version of, what I think is one of the greatest games ever made, will offer players an entirely new way to experience this iconic open-world in virtual reality,” explained analogue avatar Zuckerberg during the keynote.
And…that’s all the details we have about this new version of San Andreas. It’s likely, based on when this is being announced and the age of the game, that this VR port of San Andreas will be built upon the newly announced remastered version of it, which is part of a larger bundle of remastered GTA games including Vice City and GTA III. That collection is out on November 11 for most platforms.
Virtual Reality mods for GTA games have existed for years. For example, you can pretty easily play GTA V in VR. In fact, I’ve done that and it’s a wild, if not entirely stable, experience. If you’re willing to jump through a few more hoops, you can also play older GTA games like San Andreas in VR too. Though you might want to try messing around with these VR GTA mods sooner than later. After the way Rockstar parent company Take-Two Interactive has treated fan mods in the lead up to the GTA Trilogy remasters being announced, who knows how long these cool mods will be around.
Meanwhile, during the rest of the keynote event, Facebook showed off more sterile-looking VR environments, said the word metaverse far too often, referenced those infamous photos of Zuckerberg wearing a ton of sunscreen, and showed ghosts going to concerts. Finally, Facebook announced its new name: Meta. 2021 is still weird, in case you were wondering.