Ever since the FiveM scene exploded and the "Grand Theft Auto V" modding community went into overdrive, people have been trying to push the RAGE engine to its breaking point. I decided to see what happens when you stop playing by the rules of reality and actually put every GTA map into GTA 5 to create one singular, bloated, beautiful, and utterly chaotic digital continent.
It sounds like a dream. You start your day in a high-rise in Los Santos, hop in a Hydra, fly across a vast ocean, and land on the neon-soaked streets of Vice City before driving up to the foggy hills of San Fierro. But doing this isn't just a matter of "drag and drop." It’s a technical nightmare that exposes exactly how much work goes into world-building—and why Rockstar Games is taking so long with the next entry in the series.
The Technical Hell of Stitching Worlds Together
When you try to merge Liberty City, Vice City, and the classic San Andreas maps into the current Los Santos framework, you realize something immediately. These maps weren't built for the same era of gaming. Scale is the first casualty. If you take the Liberty City from "GTA IV" and drop it into the "GTA V" engine, it feels cramped. The lanes are narrower. The buildings feel slightly "off" in height compared to the sprawling expanse of Los Santos.
Modders like the team behind Grand Theft Auto: Underground—which was tragically shut down following Take-Two's legal crackdowns—spent years trying to solve the "z-fighting" and flickering textures that occur when you force these assets to coexist.
I put every GTA map into GTA 5 using various community DLC packs and map loaders, and the first thing I noticed was the memory leak. The game engine is basically screaming. Modern hardware can handle the polygons, sure, but the engine wasn't designed to track pathfinding for NPCs across three different terrestrial landmasses separated by miles of "fake" ocean. You'll be flying over the sea between Los Santos and Vice City and the game will just... forget how to spawn water. Or you'll see a low-poly version of the Statue of Happiness floating in a void because the LOD (Level of Detail) settings are having a mid-life crisis.
Why Vice City Feels Like a Ghost Town
One of the most jarring things about having the 2002 version of Vice City sitting next to the 2013 version of Los Santos is the "density gap." Even with high-definition texture packs, the layout of Vice City is fundamentally "old." It was designed for a PlayStation 2. Back then, we thought that map was huge. Today? You can drive from the North Point Mall to Ocean Drive in about ninety seconds if you're in a Progen T20.
The contrast is wild. You leave the hyper-detailed, graffiti-covered alleys of Strawberry in Los Santos and enter a version of Vice City that feels like a plastic toy model. It makes you realize that "more" isn't always "better." Without the life—the specific NPC scripts, the unique radio stations playing "self-actualized" 80s pop, and the specific lighting of the Florida coast—it’s just a collection of gray boxes with palm trees.
The Liberty City Paradox
Liberty City is different. Because the "GTA IV" map was built for the HD era, it actually holds up remarkably well inside the "GTA V" engine. In fact, many players argue it feels more "alive" than Los Santos. The narrow streets of Algonquin create a sense of verticality that Los Santos lacks.
When I put every GTA map into GTA 5, Liberty City became my favorite place to be. There’s something eerie about seeing Michael de Santa standing on the pier in Broker, looking across at the skyline. But it breaks the game's logic. The police AI doesn't know how to handle the bridges. If you get a five-star wanted level in the modded Liberty City, the cops spawn in the water or fall through the subway tracks. It’s a mess.
The Legal Shadow Over the Modding Community
We have to talk about the elephant in the room: Take-Two Interactive. A few years ago, projects like Liberty City in GTA V were the most anticipated things in the community. Then the cease-and-desist letters started flying.
Rockstar’s parent company has been notoriously aggressive about protecting their IP, especially when it involves porting maps from older games into the newer engine. They want to control the "Definitive" experience, even if the actual GTA Trilogy: Definitive Edition left a lot of fans feeling cold.
- Take-Two's stance: They claim these mods facilitate piracy or compete with their own re-releases.
- The Modders' stance: They are keeping old worlds alive and giving players a reason to keep buying "GTA V" decade after decade.
- The Reality: Most of the best "all-in-one" map mods are now hosted on obscure forums or private Discord servers to avoid the lawyers.
How Your PC Actually Handles the Load
Don't try this on a laptop. Seriously.
When you load a "mega-map," your VRAM usage skyrockets. Even with a beefy RTX 4090, you'll see frame drops. It’s not because the graphics are too high; it’s the draw calls. The game is trying to remember where a trash can in Portland (Liberty City) is while you're standing in Ganton (Los Santos).
I had to use a custom "Heap Adjuster" and "Packfile Limit Adjuster" just to get the game to boot without crashing to the desktop. Most people who say they "put every GTA map into GTA 5" are actually using a series of clever teleports. You aren't actually seeing one giant landmass; you're seeing "islands" that the game loads and unloads as you move.
If you actually tried to place them all on one coordinate grid, the floating-point errors would get so bad that by the time you reached the edge of the map, your character would start vibrating and eventually dissolve into a spaghetti monster. Math literally breaks at that scale.
The Realization: GTA 6 Needs to be More than Just Big
Doing this experiment taught me that a "United States of GTA" map would actually be kind of boring. After the initial "wow" factor of flying between cities wears off, you're left with a lot of empty space.
Rockstar knows this. They don't just build maps; they build "atmospheres." The reason Los Santos works is that every corner feels intentional. When you mash them all together, that intentionality vanishes. You lose the "vibe."
It turns out that the secret sauce of a Rockstar map isn't the square footage. It's the density of the satire. It's the specific way the light hits the smog at 6 PM. You can't just port that.
Getting Started with Map Mods (While You Still Can)
If you're brave enough to try this yourself, you need to be methodical. Don't just dump files into your folder.
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- Start with a clean install. Do not use your "GTA Online" version. You will get banned. Period.
- Install OpenIV. This is the foundational tool for any GTA modding.
- Use the "mods" folder method. Never overwrite the original game files.
- Look for "DLC Pack" versions. These are much easier to toggle on and off.
- Manage your expectations. You are going to see glitches. You are going to see textures that look like they were smeared with Vaseline.
The best way to experience these old maps isn't through a buggy port, honestly. It's by playing the original games. But there is something undeniably cool about seeing the "GTA 5" weapon wheel and physics engine applied to the streets of Las Venturas. It’s a glimpse into a "what if" world that Rockstar will likely never give us officially.
Actionable Insights for the Curious Player
If you really want to explore these worlds without breaking your PC, focus on single-map conversions first. Try "Liberty City V Remastered." It’s the most stable version of any map port I’ve tested. It integrates fairly well and doesn't require you to sacrifice your frame rate to the gods of chaos.
Also, keep an eye on the "Reversed" projects. There are fans literally reverse-engineering the code of "GTA III" and "Vice City" to make them run natively on modern systems with 4K support and wide-screen fixes. That’s often a much better experience than trying to force them into "GTA V."
Ultimately, putting every map into one game is a fun weekend project, but it’s a mess. It's a reminder that game design is a delicate balance of memory management and art. You can have the whole world, but if the engine can't breathe, you're just standing in a very pretty graveyard.
Go download a trainer, set your flight speed to 10x, and try to make the jump from Los Santos to Vice City. Just don't be surprised when you hit an invisible wall made of 20-year-old code.
Next Steps for Modders:
Check your settings.xml file and ensure your ShadowQuality isn't set too high when running map expansions, as this is the primary cause of the "flicker" bug in ported assets. Join the FiveM Discord communities where "World Map" developers still share manifest files for optimized prop placement. This is the only way to reduce the "object pop-in" that plagues these massive builds.