Grand Theft Auto Multiverse Mod Connects GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas

Image: winfuture.de

A portal opens in Rockstar’s 3D era

A fan-made Grand Theft Auto multiverse mod has linked GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas with interactive portals that let players move between Rockstar’s classic 3D-era cities without launching separate games, according to reporting from ComicBook and EGW-News based on modder Dryxio’s public posts.

The immediate tension is obvious: Grand Theft Auto fans are hungry for official GTA 6 updates, but this is not that. There is no source material here indicating involvement from Rockstar Games, no publisher announcement, no release plan, and no official tie-in to the next Grand Theft Auto. What is confirmed is narrower and, for longtime PC modding followers, more interesting on its own terms. Dryxio has shown a GTA portals mod that turns Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas into connected spaces through live, functioning gateways.

ComicBook describes the project as a new Grand Theft Auto mod that links the worlds of Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas through interactive portals. EGW-News identifies the modder as Dryxio and reports that, when playing as CJ, stepping through a portal can place the player in Liberty City or Vice City, with control shifting to Claude or Tommy Vercetti respectively. That phrasing matters because the project is less a simple map merge than a controlled handoff between three old engines staged like a cross-dimensional set piece.

The nostalgia hook is powerful, but the more concrete news is technical. EGW-News reports, citing Dryxio’s notes, that all three games run inside the same process and share a Direct3D device. Each portal is described as a live GPU texture, with the other game actually running behind it rather than being a video or a captured window. In practical terms, the shimmering doorway is not a decorative transition screen. It is a live view into another GTA world.

The mod’s trick is timing, not scale

Open-world mods often chase size. This GTA 3 Vice City San Andreas mod is compelling because it plays with rhythm. The player is not waiting for a launcher, changing installs, or selecting a separate executable. The reported effect is immediate traversal, a hard cut performed inside the world itself. Walk up to a portal in San Andreas and the city on the other side is already alive.

EGW-News reports that walking through a portal swaps which engine has control while the other games continue running in the background. The same report says each game retains its own saves, missions, and settings, while its AI, traffic, and physics continue in real time. Tom’s Hardware’s headline framing similarly emphasizes San Andreas, Vice City, and GTA III running simultaneously with cross-game interactions, while another Tom’s Hardware article frames the experience as GTA 3 and Vice City being playable inside San Andreas.

Those descriptions are not necessarily contradictory, but they point to two different ways of understanding the mod. From a player’s-eye view, San Andreas appears to be the staging ground, especially in EGW-News’ account of CJ stepping through portals. From a technical view, Dryxio’s own explanation as reported by EGW-News suggests three separate games remain active, with control passing between engines. That distinction keeps the story honest. This is not confirmed as a unified remaster, a complete campaign package, or a new official trilogy build. It is a modded bridge between separate games.

The detail that changes the whole feel is interactivity. ComicBook reports that players can shoot through the portals and affect the other worlds without stepping through. EGW-News goes further, saying bullets can travel through and affect NPCs and vehicles in the other game. That turns the portal from a menu replacement into a combat object. A firefight in San Andreas can spill into Liberty City before the player crosses the threshold, which gives the mod the shape of a chase sequence stitched across eras.

Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas keep their identities

The strongest version of a Rockstar classic GTA mod respects the texture of each city. GTA III’s Liberty City, Vice City’s neon beachside sprawl, and San Andreas’ wider state map were built around different pacing and different fantasies. ComicBook’s source text places the trilogy in historical sequence: Grand Theft Auto III arrived in 2001 and reshaped open-world design, Vice City followed in 2002 with an 1980s-inspired atmosphere, and San Andreas expanded the formula in 2004 with a larger world, RPG mechanics, and a widely loved story.

That context is useful because this portal project does not appear to flatten those games into one standardized map. According to EGW-News, each game keeps its own missions, saves, settings, AI, traffic, and physics. If that reporting reflects the working build accurately, the charm comes from crossing borders without dissolving the borders. Claude’s Liberty City remains Claude’s Liberty City. Tommy Vercetti’s Vice City remains its own sun-baked crime movie. CJ’s San Andreas remains the broadest and most systems-heavy of the three.

That separation is also what gives the mod its cinematic charge. A normal open-world fast-travel system moves a player between coordinates. A portal between GTA games moves the player between tones. Liberty City’s hard concrete mood, Vice City’s pastel criminal glamour, and San Andreas’ road-movie scale each carry their own combat tempo and mission language. A live doorway lets those tempos sit across from each other in one frame.

There is a design tension here that an official product would have to solve carefully. If enemies, vehicles, and bullets can cross boundaries, the encounter design could become chaotic quickly. The source material confirms cross-portal shooting and background simulation, but it does not confirm how stable long sessions are, how mission triggers behave after multiple crossings, or how the mod handles edge cases when a game’s scripting expects the player to remain in its own world. For now, the set-piece potential is clearer than the long-term reliability.

The GTA 6 comparison is a joke, not the news

PC Gamer’s headline framed the reaction with the line, “We got inter-GTA portals before GTA 6,” capturing the community’s mood around an unofficial project arriving while players wait for Rockstar’s next major entry. EGW-News similarly opens by noting that fans are wondering when Rockstar will release a new GTA 6 trailer. Those references explain why the clip traveled quickly, but they should not be mistaken for a GTA 6 development.

No provided source says Rockstar announced, endorsed, funded, or responded to Dryxio’s work. No source says the mod previews a mechanic in GTA 6. No source provides a public release date, price, supported storefront, installation path, or system requirements for the mod. The safest practical reading is that this is a fan-made technical demonstration, at least based on the material supplied, rather than a consumer product with a known download page.

That distinction protects the mod from being swallowed by GTA 6 speculation. The project’s appeal is rooted in memory and craft. It lets players imagine the old 3D trilogy as a connected crime atlas, with portals doing the work that childhood rumors and forum wish lists once handled. The fantasy is not about replacing the future of Grand Theft Auto. It is about bending the past until three separate games briefly behave like one shared stage.

There is also an important difference between official polish and modding audacity. An official release has to account for platform certification, licensing, quality assurance, legal distribution, support, accessibility, and save safety. A modder can chase a sharp idea with fewer constraints and show something stranger, rougher, and potentially less stable. That is why this story should be read as a modding milestone and nostalgia play, not as a substitute news cycle for Rockstar.

Dryxio’s earlier work makes the portal leap easier to understand

EGW-News reports that Dryxio previously managed to get GTA 3 running on an in-game TV inside GTA: San Andreas. That earlier experiment is relevant because the portal mod appears to extend the same fascination with games running within, beside, or through each other. The difference is control. A TV screen inside San Andreas is a contained novelty. A portal that can be walked through, shot through, and used to swap active engines changes the player’s relationship to the trick.

The reported architecture is unusually specific for a viral GTA clip. According to EGW-News’ summary of Dryxio’s notes, the games run in the same process, share one Direct3D device, and use live GPU textures for the portals. That gives readers a better explanation than “the maps were merged.” It suggests the other city is not a static backdrop waiting behind a loading trigger. It is a running simulation being viewed and then entered.

For action design, that difference is everything. A decorative portal is spectacle. A portal connected to live NPCs, vehicles, bullets, AI, traffic, and physics becomes a tactical space. You could use the doorway as cover, bait enemies across it, fire into another game’s street traffic, or turn a chase into a dimensional smash cut. The source material confirms the basic cross-game interaction, while EGW-News reports that a user asked whether CJ could walk or drive through portals and import cars between games. Dryxio’s reported reply was that “all of this is possible.”

That last point should be treated as potential, not a shipped feature. The sources confirm that the mod can connect the three games through portals and allow shooting across them. Vehicle importing across games is presented in EGW-News as a teased possibility from Dryxio’s exchange with users, not as a fully documented public feature. It is the kind of promise that makes modding communities lean forward, but it remains separate from what has already been shown.

What players can and cannot assume right now

For players wondering whether to install the Grand Theft Auto multiverse mod today, the provided reporting does not answer the key availability questions. There is no confirmed download link in the supplied source text, no installation guide, no supported version list, no price, and no performance target. Tom’s Hardware’s framing under PC gaming suggests the project is being discussed in a PC modding context, but the source material here does not provide a complete requirements sheet.

There are also obvious technical questions still unanswered. Running three older GTA games inside one process sounds elegant in a clip, but the sources do not provide benchmark data, crash reports, compatibility notes, or details about how the mod behaves with other popular GTA trilogy mods installed. The fact that each game reportedly keeps its own saves and settings is encouraging, but it does not prove the setup is risk-free for existing installs. Anyone who eventually tries it should treat it like an experimental PC mod and back up files first, if and when a public release becomes available.

The cleanest confirmed pitch is this: Dryxio has demonstrated a fan-made GTA portals mod that connects GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas through live portals, with cross-game shooting and real-time background simulation reported by EGW-News and ComicBook. The broader interpretation is that the project taps into a long-running desire to see Rockstar’s classic trilogy treated as one continuous mythos. The unconfirmed part is everything beyond the demonstration’s visible and reported behavior, including public availability, long-session stability, and whether driving vehicles between games will become a supported feature.

That is enough for the mod to earn attention without turning it into fake GTA 6 news. The best thing about it is how specific it is. A doorway opens in San Andreas, and another era of Grand Theft Auto is alive on the other side. For a series built on crossing bridges, stealing cars, and turning city blocks into chase scenes, that is a fan-made image with real pull.