Post-September 11th Builds

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Grand Theft Auto III.

When the September 11th World Trade Center attacks happened, the workers at Rockstar New York's offices were in a state of despair from the events due to being only a few miles away from when the location itself. Many witnessed the events happen from their windows, including Dan and Sam Houser. Though DMA Design in Scotland could continue to work, but they couldn't go to the New York offices for five days due to the mass amount of roadblocks scattered all over New York.

Dan and Sam Houser spent a depressing two weeks wondering if they even wanted to release the game at all, to prevent comparisons with terrorism. Instead of having to shelve the game, they decided to make several changes to prevent further comparisons to New York, thus delaying the game from its intended October 3, 2001 release date to October 24. About "1% of changes" were made:

• The LCPD Police and Enforcer cars had their NYPD-inspired blue/white design being changed to black/white. This was because the developers wanted to avoid scenes that looked like the attacks.¹
• The gore was slightly toned down; body parts would no longer fall apart without activating a cheat code. It would be available by default in later releases starting with the Windows version.
• A flight path of a plane was altered so it didn't look like it was going through a building, despite it not originally appearing with a building in its path in the first place.
• One mission was removed to avoid referencing "terrorist". Not much is known about the change, but the mission Kingdom Come originally had the text saying "SPANKED-up suicide bombers!" to "SPANKED-up madmen!"
• The subtitles for the Jail Break scene was changed to remove references to terrorists and police officers, despite audio files not being in the final; the early subtitles were accidentally leaked with the initial mobile port's text source files.

• The game's finale also had its dialogue altered, although the changes are unknown since the language sources lack the original version.
• No more buildings that looked like the World Trade Center were removed, but it was unknown what they meant, due to many of the prerelease renders having no buildings resembling it.
• Some pedestrian and radio dialogue was removed. Not much is known about it, but one notable radio ad that was cut in the final was for the military advertisement.

Another radio ad that was cut was the Ammu-Nation advertisment. It was, however, used on the website, and would reappear in Vice City with minor dialogue changes to the second half.

• References to airplanes being destroyed were removed:
  • It was originally possible to blow up airplanes at the airport in the German trailer, thus resulting in a four-star wanted level but the missiles pass through the plane in the final, rendering it impossible to be destroyed. However, the "Deaddodo" plane can be blown up in any version.
  • The "Plummet Airlines" billboard texture was also changed to McAdam Airways, but it would reappear in Vice City Stories, albeit with a different branding design.
• An activist who was hell-bent on bringing down Liberty City's economy was scrapped.
• The American boxart cover was redesigned because they thought that the key art reminded them too much of the attacks, so it was decided to make a collage of character art that was done in one evening, which would ironically become an iconic and famous boxart cover. The original boxart would still be used in European regions.

Interestingly, an earlier European version was seemingly released on accident, being dated September 25, two weeks before the later European version on October 7; it lacks some of the censorship later versions would have, including the Deaddodo's flight path being unchanged (flying into a building at one point, since it wasn't there originally), and the reference to suicide bombers being intact. Notably, it's also impossible to 100%, as doing everything only gives the player 98%, adding some credence to the removed mission.

There have been many infamous rumors that were spread throughout involving the changes that were made.

• It was implied that the game had no flyable aircraft or had the Dodo's wings was stripped due to the events, but the game was always planned to have driving and shooting as a core mechanic, and the Dodo was added as a novelty vehicle where people try and find radical ways to fly it. The Dodo's design always had a short wingspan, as evidenced by the Design Document and the leaked 3D vehicle models in the iOS/Android version.
• It was assumed that Darkel was originally a character that was cut due to terrorism, but he was originally a character that just gave the player odd missions that just didn't fit into the game.

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