This Deleted GTA: Vice City Mission Was Just Discovered After 20 Years
"Grand Theft Auto" games are known for the size and abundance of their unusual missions. "GTA: Vice City," specifically, featured an incredible number of missions thanks to it having Rockstar's first full-dialogue protagonist, Tommy Vercetti, voiced by the late Ray Liotta. Unfortunately, like in pretty much every video game of its size and scope, not every mission and cutscene made it into the finished product. However, that hasn't stopped people from looking for scrapped content buried in the games' files, and a newer discovery is currently blowing peoples' minds.
Over the years, curious dataminers have managed to uncover a number of incomplete missions and cutscenes that fans never got to experience before. In some cases, players have been able to restore some of this canceled "GTA" content and investigate the glitchy remains for themselves. For instance, one game-changing mission removed from "Vice City" would have played out like a lengthy tribute to "Scarface." Of course, because "GTA: Vice City" turns two decades old this year, many fans have simply assumed there isn't anything new to find.
But recently, some savvy modders found elements of a deleted mission in the game's code — one that wasn't present in the original retail release of "Vice City." Instead, these bits of code were discovered in the notoriously glitch-filled "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy" remastered collection. The mission in question appears to feature Tommy Vercetti working as an actor in an action film, complete with a shootout and high-speed car chase that ended in disaster. Here's what we know about this newly-revealed chapter of "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City."
Tommy Vercetti suffers a strange fate in this cut mission
Maybe the most surprising thing about this deleted scene is where it was discovered. According to BadgerGoodger from YouTube channel Vadim M, the developer in charge of "GTA: The Trilogy," Grove Street Games, appear to have overlooked a few things when finalizing the remasters. In particular, Badger says, "[Grove Street Games] not only had no freaking clue how to make good remasters of our beloved games, but also didn't look through the game files and remove internal studio files before releasing this masterpiece."
According to the unearthed files in "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy," showcased by Badger, there's a mysterious mission file in the game's code titled "MovieDemo.SC." The YouTuber notes that the file functions less like an interactive mission and more like a cutscene in its current state, showing fans a sliver of a larger mission. In the file, Tommy leaves a police station and heads to a nearby club, where he gets into a gunfight (as one does in Vice City). Afterward, Tommy gets tailed by the police and eventually crashes his vehicle into explosive barrels, killing him.
You'd be right to wonder how a mission or cutscene in the middle of the game was apparently supposed to end with Tommy Vercetti going down in flames, especially since he canonically survives the events of the game's finale to fight another day. Unfortunately, all fans are left with is speculation.
Was Tommy Vercetti going to be an actor?
Aside from the file name, there aren't many unique aspects of the mission to help people piece together its original purpose. However, BadgerGoodger has highlighted a theory about the mission's relation to the game's lore, one that actually makes a lot of sense and will likely feel familiar to fans of the more Hollywood-obsessed (er, Vinewood-obsessed) missions of "Grand Theft Auto 5."
He points out that players can buy a film studio and work for movie producer Steve Scott during the main game. Players then help the producer make adult movies as part of a side hustle. BadgerGoodger notes that there are multiple generic sets on the movie production lot, hinting that there were previously more plans for the movie studio. This might tie into the mission file being called 'Moviedemo.SC.' Additionally, it tracks with the contents of the mission being more cinematic and why Tommy would appear to die in the mission. He also mentions finding traces of a removed phone call that mentions filming a car chase scene for the studio, further connecting the dots. Maybe Tommy was going to fill in for a stunt driver during a particularly wild movie shoot?
The comments on Vadim M's video are full of fans excitedly speculating about the nature of this deleted mission, with some theorizing that it could have been part of a cinematic demo. We may never know exactly what the mission is intended to be, but the obsessive analysis of older "GTA" titles just highlights just how much love there still is for the older games in the franchise.