‘Minecraft’ Players Recreating Entire ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ Map

Minecraft fans don’t mess around when it comes to recreating something they love. From the fortress city of Minas Tirith from the Lord of the Rings and King’s Landing from Game of Thrones and the fantasy world of A Song of Ice and Fire to ancient wonders of Babylon and European-style cathedrals, the drive to build ever-more elaborate and ambitious projects in the successful building simulation seems never-ending.

Now, fans of Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) are recreating the entire game map within the world of Minecraft, including the city of Los Santos and the mountains of Blaine County. The project, called “GTA 5 in Minecraft,” has already taken more than a year, but it’s making major progress, according to project lead and YouTuber “N11ck.”

N11cK posted a YouTube video recently to show off the progress in creating a replica of the GTA 5 map on a 1:1 scale, block for block. The results are pretty impressive.

Though it’s still a work in progress, much has been done since it started in January 10, 2015. The video above, which is the 175th episode about the project’s progress, includes several areas from GTA 5 that fans might recognize. The team plans to recreate everything, including the game’s extensive skyscrapers and mountains.

N11cK regularly provides these video updates to demonstrate the latest work he and his team have accomplished. The rural areas, northern portions and underwater areas of the map are yet to be completed, so there is still much work to be done. According to Geek, when the project is finished, it will be a staggering 7,500 blocks by 7,500 blocks. His first video below is a cinematic overview, available below.

The fusion of the hugely popular sky-is-the-limit building sim Minecraft and the open-world action adventure Grand Theft Auto V demonstrates the dedication of their respective gaming communities. As reported by The Inquisitr, Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson was able to sell the game to Microsoft for $2.5 billion last year thanks to the stunning popularity of the creative building franchise The Inquisitr also covered the story of YouTube personality Jordan “CaptainSparklez” Maron, who was able to purchase a $4.5 million home in Hollywood just from his video earnings from playing Minecraft.

Grand Theft Auto V has its own success stories, from being one of the best-selling video games of all time, shipping over 54 million copies by June 2015 and shattering no less than 7 Guinness World Records, which the International Business Times reported on.

Cinemablend posted an article observing that such a stunning project makes everything the author built in Minecraft “look like a toothpick shanty by comparison.”

“Impressive, sure, but I’m more curious to find out where these people find all of their free time. I can’t imagine how long it must have taken to get all of this put together, even if you are working with a bunch of friends.”

Screenrant had an apt comment regarding the free time put into such enormous undertakings.

“Of course, there are probably those who think it’s silly to put this much work into a map for Minecraft. N11cK and his cohorts don’t seem to have many detractors, though; looking through the comments of his videos mostly just shows people who are excited about the project and want to tell him and the team what a great job they’re doing.”

Collaborative building efforts to create the starship Enterprise, the RMS Titanic, and the (ongoing) effort to build the whole of Middle-Earth have all been wildly successful, and N11cK’s project will hopefully be no different.

As of now, there is no reported time frame of when “GTA 5 in Minecraft” will be completed, but interested players can join the server at N11cK.net.

[Image via Rockstar Games]