When I first discovered that the character Catalina — of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — was in fact the double-crossing girlfriend of Claude in the opening of Grand Theft Auto III, it felt like both a grand revelation and a nice reunion for a character that I had previously spent an inordinate amount of time playing as. So getting to see Claude in the background of the Wear Flowers in Your Hair mission in GTA: San Andreas was one of the things I was looking forward to in the controversial new Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.
Unfortunately, like many aspects of this much-maligned collection, Grove Street Games somehow managed to muck this up too. I suppose you could chock this up to the fact that Claude is supposed to be a few years younger in San Andreas than he is at the start of GTA III, so some discrepancy in his appearance is to be expected. But I have to say that Claude’s younger self doesn’t fare too well in the looks department.
Here is how Claude looks in the new updated version of Grand Theft Auto III:
And here is how he looks in the new version of San Andreas:
I mean, yikes…
In Grand Theft Auto III, he looks cartoony, but he’s still a bit rakish and handsome. I might even say hip. But in San Andrea, well… Claude looks like a dork. That’s not to say that Catalina looks any better — because she most decidedly does not — so I guess I should’ve seen this coming. But, good lord, was that boy hit with the ugly stick. I suppose, if nothing else, at least Claude managed to get better-looking with age.
I would’ve preferred that Grove Street Games just used the character model from their version of GTA III and maybe just de-aged him a bit for San Andreas. But honestly, even just using the model without any adjustments at all would’ve been better than whatever the hell is going on here.
