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Love Hurts was originally believed to be a mission from Grand Theft Auto III that was removed from the final release of the game.

Description[]

It was thought to be one of the five cut missions given by Darkel[1], it was widely believed the objective of the mission was for the player to destroy the Love Media building with a Dodo to kill Donald Love.

Following the release of the game in October 2001, it was initially believed that this mission was removed due to the September 11 attacks on New York City.

Debunked[]

The mission content rumours were denied by Rockstar Games in 2012[2]. These denials were verified after the 2021 release by GTA Series Videos of the information contained in GTA III: The Game Design Document[3], a DMA Design/Rockstar North document dated from 2000 where it confirms that the Dodo (referred to as "Wingless cessna") was indeed never meant to be flown by the player. Moreover, Donald Love has been a very late add to the game, and thus the appearance of this mission wouldn't have been likely.

References[]

  1. GTAIII Asked and answered 1[]

    Darkel
    Darkel, such a strange character... Pictures of him are available on GTA III's official website and his name appears in GTA III's booklet. I heard somewhere that he was supposed to give you some kind of "rampage-like" missions. What was exactly his purpose? Why wasn't he included in the final version of the game?Hey Rockstars... tell me if you can. Is it true that removed character from Grand Theft Auto III named Darkel was a Russian communist ?
    What was the whole fuss with Darkel? Was there really a mission where you blew up a school bus full of children?
    Who was Darkel?
    — Questions asked
    Darkel was just a crazy bum who gave you some crazy missions. They were removed a few months before the game was done and long before 9/11 because they just weren’t as good as the rest of the game, and tonally they were a little odd. He started with 5 missions and they were slowly all cut. When only one or 2 were left, they were all removed as the character just didn’t work alongside the other characters.
    None of these missions involved blowing up buses of school children although that is a funny rumor!
    — Rockstar answer.
  2. GTAIII Asked and answered 2[]

    9/11
    The game was released only 41 days after 9/11. It's known that last-minute changes were made to game content because of the traumatic emotional situation at the time. Some are known, such as police vehicles being changed to not look like NYPD, but rumors of bigger changes won't completely go away. Such as: there were school buses and children in Liberty City that were removed, Liberty City had twin towers that were changed into a construction site, and Donald Love was killed by airplane hitting his building and this was edited out so he just disappears. Big changes seem unlikely to do in 41 days considering Rockstar New York was literally in a war zone and there had to be time to test and physically ship the game. Once and for all, can you list everything that was changed after 9/11 and debunk the most ridiculous rumors about this situation?
    — Question asked.
    As far as we can remember, the list of changes is covered above – the other stuff is nonsense.
    — Rockstar answer.
    Was the Dodo ever supposed to stay in flight? don't get me wrong my friends and I spent many fun hours trying to see who could fly the longest, in a plane with clipped wings before crashing into the sea.
    Was the Dodo intended to be a actual plane, or was its wingspan reduced because of 9/11? (I know it can be flown with practice)
    How come the Dodo plane in GTA3 can’t fly?
    — Questions asked.
    Because we were making a driving and shooting game - even that, as a combination of core gameplay elements, was very, very radical at the time. The Dodo was never meant to be flown very much at all, and it certainly wasn’t grounded as a result of 9/11 – it was just a fun thing that people then went crazy with when they figured out various bugs that let them fly it!
    — Rockstar answer.
  3. GTA III: The Game Design Document. (Link to video)
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