Welcome to Liberty City. Where it all began. The critically acclaimed blockbuster Grand Theft Auto III brings to life the dark and seedy underworld of Liberty City. With a massive and diverse open world, a wild cast of characters from every walk of life, and the freedom to explore at will, Grand Theft Auto III puts the dark, intriguing, and ruthless world of crime at your fingertips. With stellar voice acting, a darkly comic storyline, a stunning soundtrack, and revolutionary open-world gameplay, Grand Theft Auto III is the game that defined the open-world genre for a generation.
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DJ Toni on Flash FM is the same Toni Cipriani who ran Flashback FM back in GTA III, just younger and considerably more naive this time round given Vice City's earlier timeline. A chunk of her on-air material even reuses jokes from her GTA III stint, including the bit about her having been on fire, which is a nice bit of continuity for anyone who remembers the earlier game.
Lazlow Jones has voiced a radio personality in every mainline GTA game since the third entry and has been the series' chief writer for its radio content behind the scenes for just as long. GTA V finally gave him a physical, on-screen role too, one where the protagonists get to put him through some fairly humiliating situations for a change.
Donald Love, the eccentric businessman from GTA III, was apparently meant to have a far bigger part to play in Vice City's story. He ended up quietly shrunk down to a background cameo instead, most likely because Kyle MacLachlan, who voiced him, wasn't available to come back for more recording sessions.
Rockstar doubled down on scale as much as style for the sequel, building a map that's roughly twice as large as the one players explored in GTA III. More beaches, more islands, more rooftops to find hidden packages on, all without sacrificing the density that made Liberty City feel alive in the first place.
Vice City wasn't a standalone bet for Sony, it was the middle chapter of a three-game exclusivity package that also covered GTA III and San Andreas. Sony's own executives later admitted the whole arrangement was partly a nervous reaction to Microsoft's Xbox launching around the same time, and it ended up cementing all three as some of the best-selling PS2 games ever made.
