What 9/11 changed in GTA III: the cop cars, a cut mission, and a cover made in one evening

GTA III was almost finished in September 2001. It was set in Liberty City, Rockstar's version of New York, and it was a few weeks from shelves when the attacks happened in the real one.

On 19 September 2001, Rockstar pushed the game back three weeks. Terry Donovan, then Rockstar's managing director, said the company had found "certain small contextual references" it was "no longer comfortable with." The PS2 version finally came out in North America on 23 October.

Rockstar later described the finished game as "about 1% different". Here's what changed.

The police cars

In the original build, Liberty City's police cars were blue and white, which looked a lot like the NYPD's. Rockstar changed them to black and white, the generic American cop car look. If you've played GTA III, the cars you remember are the post-9/11 version.

A plane and a mission

A plane in the game flew on a path that made it look like it went into, or right behind, a skyscraper. Rockstar changed the route. A mission that referenced terrorists was taken out, and some pedestrian lines and talk radio got edited too.

The cover

The biggest change was the box. The original cover was dropped for being "too raw", and Sam Houser said the replacement was designed in an evening. That replacement is the grid of tiles with characters in little panels, which turned into the look of the whole series. GTA 6's cover still uses panels, twenty-five years later.

The one that wasn't 9/11: Darkel

For years people assumed a character called Darkel was cut because of the attacks. He was a street kid revolutionary who wanted to bring down Liberty City's economy, which does sound like something Rockstar would've pulled in that moment.

Dan Houser has said otherwise. According to him, Darkel was cut "months before" release, for other reasons. So he's often listed with the 9/11 changes, but he doesn't belong there.

There were also rumours before release that the game had schoolchildren among its pedestrians. Rockstar called that "nonsense".

Why it still matters

GTA III is the game that made the series 3D and turned it into what it is now, and it got there with a three-week delay and a cover thrown together overnight. Rockstar's had to rethink a game at the last minute before, and it'll do it again if it has to.

It's also a neat contrast with now. GTA 6 has slipped twice, both times with months of warning (here's the full story of how it got made). GTA III had three weeks. If you're curious where the series' controversy habit really started, it goes back further, to a tabloid publicist in 1997.