SUMMARY
- GTA 3 had a hilarious bug involving the moon in the game.
- The bug even carried over to GTA San Andreas.
Glitches in games are common. While there are some glitches that are not harmful, there are others that make a massive difference in the game. Thanks to social media glitches are instantly spotted and shared by players, allowing developers to take corrective measures wherever necessary.
Sometimes these unintentional glitches in games give players a great time or even a great laugh. Remember the crafting bug in Destiny 2, which the developers left alone urging players to “have fun” with it, or the recent Palworld’s hilarious glitch of a mountain-sized Pal?! Glitches can sometimes be fun to play around with.
Talking of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto, one is likely to see a lot of fun bugs, which are mostly easter eggs, however, they’re fun to explore. Besides it’s safe to say that GTA and glitches share a close relationship since the game actually originated from a bug in the game “Race’n’Chase”.
Moon size glitch in GTA 3
While playing any of the GTA Trilogy games, namely, GTA 3, Vice City, or San Andreas, players are likely to find themselves surrounded by interesting and unusual secrets to uncover. They make players wonder why they exist, whether they are glitches or some sort of easter eggs.
One such unusual yet funny glitch in GTA 3 is that of the moon which changes its size. Whenever one aims at the moon with a sniper rifle and shoots at it, the moon changes in size. It swaps between a smaller moon and a larger moon.
Naturally like any other strange element of the game, the community wondered what it was. Some even tried finding any reference to it within other GTA games just like other easter eggs. However, to no avail, they were unable to find anything. Thus, many players concluded that it may merely be an oversight from the developers, just another harmless glitch.
Why does the moon size increase in GTA 3?
Now, more than 12 years after the game was released in 2001, the story behind the moon glitch was finally discovered. It turns out, it is just another glitch, having no references at all. The story behind the glitch was recently shared by an ex-Rockstar Games developer Obbe Vermeij on X.
Notably, Obbe has also previously revealed why Claude was silent in GTA 3. The ex-dev was questioned about the moon in GTA 3 and why it changes sizes when shot. To this Obbe said that it is actually something that was accidentally left in the game. It was implemented as a way for the team to choose how big they wanted the moon to be and later was left untouched.
The artists gave me a texture for the moon in gta3.
I placed the moon in the sky, made sure it was visible at night and that it was a reasonable size.
A few days later 4 artists were at my desk asking me to change the size of the moon.
“No problem” I said.It turned out they… pic.twitter.com/EseRI9jo6H
— Obbe Vermeij (@ObbeVermeij) February 14, 2024
He said while working on the game at Rockstar, he was given a texture for the moon in GTA 3 and ensured that it was visible at night with a reasonable size. However, later some Rockstar artists asked him to change the size of the moon. Interestingly, the artists themselves did not know what size they wanted it to be. Some of them wanted it smaller and realistic, while others wanted the moon to be big and dramatic.
He further explains, “Since I was working on the sniper rifle, I made it so that the moon toggled through 3 sizes (small, medium, large) as the player sniped it. The artists never got back to me so I just left it in. It was still there in SA.”
The developer made it so that when shooting at the moon with a sniper rifle, the moon would change its size. This would let the artists decide on which size looked best. However, later the artist never got back to him with the final desired size. Thus it was left as it is to change according to the sniper rifle.
