Are you finding that the new GTA Trilogy remasters are just too dark? Us too. This is affecting GTA: San Andreas on Xbox Game Pass, and reportedly is a problem in GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City as well.
Fortunately, there is a way to fix the issue, but it's only a temporary workaround for now.
Here's what you need to do:
- Hit the pause button while in-game (Menu)
- Scroll over with RB to the 'Graphics' section
- Go down to 'Contrast'
- Move this all the way to the LEFT
In addition to this, you can also play around with the 'Brightness' slider, but this doesn't seem to have much effect overall, so even pushing it from right to left (or vice versa) probably won't make a major difference for you. That said, we've found that keeping it all the way to the right is arguably the best solution for now.
Of course, we're hoping Rockstar and Grove Street Games will be able to implement a permanent fix for the brightness issues in the near future, which seem to be caused by problems with HDR. The result is that certain scenes are particularly dark, and it can be difficult to even see characters' faces properly.
Here's a look at the difference between the default contrast and the workaround above:
Have you been running into this issue? Let us know down in the comments section below.
Comments 28
I've been playing GTA 3 all day and have noticed at night when it rains it is virtually impossible to see anything. Thankfully I can play around with the settings and hopefully fix it.
Great will do this
Noticed this in San Andreas. Opening scene the officers faces were hard to see. Gonna try this temp fix
Easiest way - Uninstall contact Rockstar for a refund on what is a complete and total joke
RDR2 is a crap fest with HDR and Dolby is worse. GTA V also handles these modes pretty bad. Oddly enough L.A. Noire looks decent with Dolby and great on HDR. R* just sucks lately
@torne yep had noticed the same thing
First thing I done when I had the chance after the opening scene was to change the brightness and contrast because it was so dark. Also does anybody else think the subtitles are too far down the screen?
I’ll be giving this temporary fix a try when I next play GTA III as there is sometimes a really dark scene where I can barely make out the characters faces.
The rain in GTA III is horrendous, it’s just like a load of lines covering the screen making it hard to see anything it’s really annoying. I just watched the official trailer for the trilogy and the rain from GTA III looks fine on there, Grove Street Games have actually made it worse in the final build. A lot of NPC’s heads are really small too, it looks so weird. I hope they get patched soon.
I have a prob seeing anything when it rains ,I'll give this a go hopefully it improves things
@MaccaMUFC same with San andreas
Yea the opening scenes of San Andreas were nigh impossible to see...until I fiddled with the setting
@Jsb5150 thats weird on my lg C1 they both look great in Dolby RD2 looks exceptional GTA5 looks only slightly better....unfortunatly i bought LA noire on the switch so that i cant say...i did have to play with a brightness setting on RD2 it was a little dark to me in Dolby Vision
This was the very first thing I did in the game. Kept pausing/unpausing the game throughout the intro trying to get this right.
I really hope this is patched. I skipped this on Switch even though I wanted the portability because I wanted the Xbox Series X’s horsepower and honestly it feels like a lazy switch port even on Xbox.
I was hoping this would be good but something felt off about how much R* hid it. It's pretty clear 2K pushed this too soon for a cash grab. I feel bad for Grove Street Games because I'm sure they care deeply about their work but the business morons in the publisher 2K never get hated on, gamers only like to hate on the hard working developers for whatever reason. Good thing I got Mafia remake when it was on sale, I didn't install it yet but it will do just fine now.
The darker the better then I wouldn't have been able to see this rubbish. Thank u gamepass. Not worth the space on my ssd.
@Blessed_Koz Did you really just say, GTAV, which runs worse in every way to RDR2, looks better? Way.
Yeah was on the fence about buying ..but after playing abit of SA...Just can't justify the £55 for 3 PS2 games ....maybe if it drops below £30 il get it..and even then I know I am being ripped off by an obvious cash grab
This isn’t the first game I’ve had this problem with HDR. In addition to the above steps I ran through the HDR wizard on Xbox and didn’t quite follow the rules as strictly which helped. It does mean having to run through again for other games unfortunately but it takes less than a minute.
There seems to be a huge range of implementations of HDR across games, some are too bright and washed out (Avengers) and this one is FAR too dark. Isn’t there some standard for this?
@torne the rain effect is absolutely horrendous. When it rains at night I’ve had to just stop and wait for it to pass as I can’t see anything 🤷🏻♂️ Surely to god they aren’t going to leave it like that ffs 😣
@Originut I've don't have Apple TV but having a quick look I guess that is a similar system to using a proper calibration tool that you attach to your monitor to get output readings to calibrate against. Clever!
"the calibration on the Series X is the best tool I’ve used in gaming." That may be, and I don't want this to sound like a console war thing as it isn't intended that way, and perhaps it's just the specific games I have chosen, but I haven't had any issues with HDR on PS5 yet. It was set and forget. Whereas I feel i'm constantly battling HDR on XSX and have had to recalibrate on several games. Here on GTA I couldn't see anyone's faces during the intro.
Whereas I finally gave up on Avengers which was too bright and just accepted it was the game's style after looking at videos like the one below. It's a washed out, bloom and lens flare filled mess... as if J.J. Abrahms and Michael Bay had a lovechild
https://youtu.be/Dsl8oJ5bPxU?t=669
@Plonky I've not played VC or SA yet. Any idea if those have the terrible rain as well?
@torne sa does that's the only one I've played and the rain is hell ,if u get rain during a mission ull b lucky if you compete it
@Martsmall well that is unfortunate because when it's not raining I have a great time with the game.
Hopefully they can patch this quickly
@InterceptorAlpha no what i said was in dolby vision on my tv it looks better albeit not much better but better then without it....and by no way did i ever say it looked better then RD2 if you look at who im responding too they were saying both of those games look worse with dolby vision then without or with hdr....
so i tried this on the gamepass gta sA and it gets brighter but it also gets washed out and still looks *****
@torne sorry I haven’t got that far yet, I was planning on playing them all in order. Not sure I can manage it in its current state unfortunately!!
@Martsmall yeah especially at night it makes it impossible to see anything lol
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