Huge new GTA 5 mod will let you run around a full recreation of Liberty City as Michael, Trevor, and Franklin, if you fancy returning to Niko's old haunts ahead of GTA 6

I've got no idea if you can run into Mr Bellic, but surely it's worth hopping on the plane to find out.

2025's already had plenty of GTA things to talk about three days in thanks to some alleged leaks and definitely real projections surrounding GTA 6, which is set to come out later this year. GTA 5's still chipping in though, with a team of modders having recently released a huge project for it that'll let you explore Liberty City as Mike, Franklin, and Trevor.

The mod is dubbed the "Liberty City Preservation Project" and as revealed by its creators in an interview with RockstarIntel, has been in the works since 2018, with its current 12 person development team called World Travel having come about via the union of lots of different GTA modding projects.

The team released the first version of its creation on December 25, and it looks pretty damn impressive. Basically, the group have had a go at completely re-creating Liberty City as it exists in GTA IV, complete with fully functioning subway system, working police, and ambient traffic.

If you download the current version of the mod - which is still a work-in-progress - for GTA 5's single player, LC is a separate map from San Andreas that you can take a plane out to at anmy time, while the mutiplayer version for FiveM replaces Los Santos due to "due to limitations".

While the "map, vehicles, pedestrians, interiors, ambience, radio stations and much more" are all designed to mirror what you'll remember experiencing as Niko, Luis, and Johnny (even down to classic easter eggs like the Statue of Happiness having a beating heart), the team has also put some work in to make sure the envirnoment to doesn't look too shabby compared to LS on modern hardware, via an optional HD texture pack.

There's also been some effort put in to try and make Liberty City feel a lot more dynamic than it did back in the day, via the addition of extra scenarios and details you can run across as you explore, such as pedestrians getting a parking ticket. On the other hand, some AI upscaling's been used to help deliver the textures, and it looks like some of that might break your immersion a bit if you stare at it too long - or for more than two seconds.

The team behind the mod - which you can grab via World Travel's Discord server - told RockstarIntel they were actually initially on the fence about releasing it to the public, due to fear of potential DMCA action from Rockstar, which has a history of doing such things to GTA mods. However, the grioup are hoping the developer's changed its approach since acquiring modding team Cfx.re - the folks behhind roleplaying mods FiveM and RedM.

It'll be interesting to see how things play out, but in the mean time, the LC Preservation Project's an interesting thing for GTA-heads to consider checking out.