The Grand Theft Auto series is widely acclaimed among conspiracy theorists and Easter egg hunters for its secrets. Whenever players fired or aimed a sniper rifle at the moon in GTA Vice City or San Andreas, it instantly changed its size. Starting from its original size, it would grow gigantically before changing back to its original size as it was. While most of the easter eggs are filled with pop culture and movie references, many players (including me) seem to have given up on this size-shifting Moon mystery.
Though shooting at the moon in Vice City had this result, players couldn’t break down this Easter egg in almost 20 years. Adding to the fiasco, there was no explanation by the Rockstar Games either. But that was only until a former developer from Rockstar North shed some light on this question.
GTA Vice City’s Strange Moon Easter Egg Explained
Shared first by Kotaku, the former Rockstar North employee Obbe Vermeij posted a blog sharing insights on the development of the old GTA series and the moon Easter egg. Since the Internet can sometimes be full of hatred and negativity, however, Vermeij had to voluntarily take down these blogs. Luckily, we could uncover the deleted developer’s blog using the Wayback Machine which stated that the size-changing moon was added to simply come to a conclusion at Rockstar.
When the artists gave him a texture for the moon in GTA 3, he ensured that it was visible at night and had a reasonable size. A few days later, four artists were at the desk asking him to change the size of the moon. While two of the artists wanted the size of the natural sattelite to be bigger, the other two wanted it to be smaller and more realistic. As the four argued amongst one other, he suggested making the size of the moon inter-changeable in the game.
Coincidentally, since Obbe was working on the sniper rifle, he further suggested the moon toggled through three sizes. These included small, medium, and large when players sniped and aimed at the moon. This seems to solve the argument between them and reach a conclusion. As the artists never got back to him, Vermeij left the Easter egg within the game. Furthermore, this feature also appeared in GTA: San Andreas preceding GTA III and Vice City.
The shared anecdote made me think how at times easter eggs don’t reference anything but can simply solve a conflict. However, this cool easter egg couldn’t appear in newer GTA titles like GTA 4 and GTA V. This might be due to the time difference between the release of these game titles.
That being said, it would be fun if Rockstar Games brought this particular easter egg back in GTA 6.
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