Grand Theft Auto IV

Jul 25, 2007

Sure, you've seen the trailers for Grand Theft Auto IV, and you've likely watched them more than once, dissecting them constantly in a futile attempt to theorize about what the game'll actually be like. Here's what we do know: the hero, Niko Bellic, has just come to Liberty City, seemingly to get a fresh start on life. We also know that it's bound to go horribly wrong. We also know that Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis was the first showcase of RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine), and it would show off what GTA IV could look like. Now, after a 45 minute-long demo last week, we've now got a much better idea of what the new Liberty City entails, and frankly, yes, it's looking as good as you think. In fact, it was so nice that Rockstar showed it to us twice; first to show it off, then to explain everything in-game.

The build that we saw is still a work in progress. Voiceovers are still being implemented, so much of the in-game content we saw was dependent on subtitles. Most of the music we heard is placeholder; at the moment, we're not sure if any of it will actually be in the final game. We also noticed subtle differences that spell out the leap from PS2-era games to now. For example, the pause menu looks dramatically different. Instead of the familiar font style from GTA III, this menu is far more minimal. Think if American Apparel's design team came up with an in-game pause menu, and you're getting there.

As a heads-up for hardcore fans, Liberty City's boroughs are getting new names. Algonquin is Manhattan, Broker is Brooklyn, Dukes is Queens, Bohan is the Bronx, and Alderney is New Jersey. We're still not sure how Rockstar North plans to prevent you from crossing over to another borough prematurely, but then, like everything else, it's still a work in progress. With that, our demo started up in Star Junction, which is the equivalent of Times Square. Niko is en route to meet Francis McReary, a crooked LCPD detective who, from what we can tell, is blackmailing him. As the main section of our demo, McReary wants him to go and infiltrate the law firm of Goldberg, Leiner, & Shyster. Of course, there's stuff that goes down along the way as well.

It's in these steps that you'll see the most dramatic differences in this GTA. Just as GTA III felt like a slice of New York pre-9/11, GTA IV feels like a return to the fake Big Apple in the world of today, with all of today's accoutrements. In Star Junction, Niko gets a call on his cell phone, which is in the lower-right corner of the screen. His cell phone is a lifeline of sorts. You won't need to hit pay phones or worry about pagers anymore. You'll be able to call your contacts as necessary. Instead of waiting, you'll be able to take the initiative on your own.

After the call, Niko heads out of Star Junction to get a gun. Oh, and he buys a hot dog. We don't know about pulling your car over and picking up ladies of the evening, but for now, we're sure that you'll regain health through food and rest. And by rest, we've been told that it's in the literal sense; you won't have an interface like Gears of War or Halo in which you can back away from a firefight to heal your wounds and jump right back in.

On the way to perform his mission, Niko goes to an alley where his friend, Little Jacob, a Jamaican arms dealer from Dukes (does this mean that Jamaica, Queens is "Kingston, Dukes?") has some firepower for him. Rockstar is moving away from the satirical edge of putting Ammu-Nations around Liberty City; instead, Niko will have to depend on friends and connections to get weapons. Also, the RPG-esque system of upgrading weapons skills based on use, as found in San Andreas, has been done away with; apparently, Niko's background ensures that he's proficient enough with guns to easily wield anything.

In order to infiltrate the law firm, Niko will have to go to the G,L, & S website and e-mail his resume to them. The Internet, it turns out, will very much be a part of the GTA IV experience. That doesn't mean that Niko will be surfing on the real MySpace in-game, but it does mean that you'll have missions in which you'll have to hop online. Niko goes to a cybercaf¿ with a clever name -- we'll pass on revealing it for now. After applying for a job with the firm, Niko steps outside, and gets a phone call for the interview. Now, for the sake of speeding up the demo, the call was expedited, but in the final product, you'll likely have a few in-game days before you get any contact from Goldberg, Leiner & Shyster offices. Regardless, Niko adds the appointment to his cell phone's reminder list and goes on conducting business. He gets another phone call from McReary to meet him in the southern ports of Algonquin, and hops in a taxi.

That's right; he hops in a taxi. In GTA IV Rockstar has taken steps to make things a bit more realistic in some regards, yet still game-oriented in others. So far, the transportation system exemplifies this best. Sure, Niko can still break into a car and hotwire it, but the amount of animations that it now takes mean that, just as in real life, it's going to take a lot more effort. If a cop happens to be nearby, you can virtually ensure that he'll be all over Niko before he can finish breaking the window. Instead, Niko can just do what millions of real New Yorkers do: hail a cab.

In Vice City, if you failed a mission, Tommy could hop into a cab and shortcut back to the start point. In GTA IV, you'll name a spot and the cabbie will take Niko there. You'll have the option to look outside at the streets as the cab drives, and you'll even feel the potholes. And if you're tired of checking out the scenery, you can skip the cab ride cinematic and cut to the chase. This new feature will likely come as a welcome relief to people who grew tired of spending ten minutes of real-time driving from one end of San Andreas to another.

As we watched Niko ride around Algonquin, we noticed that for the first time in the series, the streets have names. Many of them seem to be named after either areas of New York (Bleeker), elements (Calcium Ave.), or gems (Quartz St.). Also, while the music is largely in place as placeholder right now, we heard rare groove, dub, punk, talk radio, funk, and ambient. Of course, Rockstar shies away from revealing the licensed soundtracks for GTA games until the very last minute, so don't expect to hear much in the way of specifics until we get closer to October.

As Niko arrives in the South Algonquin Seaport, we get to see an exchange between Niko and McReary. Besides the mission for the law firm, Niko will also have to go to the Humboldt River port, where a thief has stolen evidence that could get McReary in very hot water. Niko hops into another taxi and heads over to make contact with the thief. He calls McReary and gets the thief's cell phone number texted over to him. Niko calls him, and, we discover, you'll have to stall him by talking while looking around for someone talking on a cell phone. After Niko hangs up, you'll have to look for someone hanging up his phone. After he hangs up, Niko walks over, pops two rounds into the thief's face, takes the memory stick with incriminating evidence, and starts hightailing it out of the area. Before we get into the details of the new police chase mechanics, it's worth noting that this encounter was our first with seeing GTA IV's violence. Rockstar PR mentioned that the team has been working hard on recreating the same jarring effect that we all felt when we saw a shooting for the first time in GTA3. We think they've succeeded so far.

In the past, it was much easier to evade police presence around whatever city you were in. Now, you'll have a much more sweeping scope and a stronger sense of cat and mouse dynamics. As we put in our notes, "search radius = GTFO." The radar has more detail in regard to information now. You'll have red and blue lights representing the search. The red lights equal the police sweep at the place where Niko was last seen committing a crime, and blue lights are the police search of the surrounding area. It's all rooted in line of sight. That also means that if another cop spots him, the search radius resets to Niko's current location. There are swirling dots on the radius that represent police cars. Niko will have to steer clear of them as well; if any of them spot him, they'll call police dispatch and re-route the cops in his direction.

However, during this chase, our demoer decided to steal a car to get away, and while the animation took a while, once he was able to get Niko away from the police, we got a chance to see how the camera has changed in regard to driving mechanics. The camera leans to the left more, to correspond with American driving, and it's closer to both the car and the ground. As a result, Rockstar claims, the Rockstar North team has managed to recreate the same sense of wide-open space that anyone who's driven south on 5th Avenue through Manhattan has seen: the Liberty City equivalent has a clear path from its version of 5th Ave all the way down through the southernmost point of Algonquin. Seeing it with our own eyes, we'd say that they've done an admirable job.

At that point, Niko gets back to McReary at the meeting spot (Rockstar North is still debating whether or not to use the yellow cone icon that indicates a mission point), drops off the memory stick, and gets a reminder that he's got a job interview. With that, he cabs it over to Perseus, a clothing store, to buy a suit. A trip to the clothing store is not going to be the same as it was in San Andreas, however. The level of customization that gamers had with CJ won't be in this game. Niko won't be able to get too fat, too skinny, or too muscular. With the current game engine, physics, and Natural Motion animations (which affect everything from the way Niko bobs his head as he runs to his steps when he turns), playing with weight would throw everything off-kilter. Plus, with GTA IV's more serious turn, wacky character customization won't be happening here. Instead, he picks up a $2000 chocolate brown suit, $200 shoes, and hops into a cab.

Upon arriving at the law firm, Niko calls the intercom, gets buzzed in, walks past a few portly but friendly security guards, and gets escorted into Goldberg's office. Goldberg reads over his resume as Niko pulls out a gun, and amidst the fairly jarring demo, we get a good laugh out of the lawyer's dialogue, which includes gems such as "lawyers win cases with words, not bullets," and "guns don't kill people, videogames do." Goldberg drops the evidence against McReary, but Niko drops him immediately after. From here comes the final showcase of GTA IV: the shooting system.

We've said in the past that we feel that games like Splinter Cell, Resident Evil 4, and Gears of War have influenced the action genre with the over-the-shoulder targeting system, and with GTA IV, we feel comfortable saying that it is now a standard. For a series that gets critical acclaim despite a highly flawed targeting mechanic, it's a welcome relief to see that the new game adopts the new standard. As Niko attempts to fend off not only security guards within the office building, but police outside, we got a chance to see how it seems to work. Niko can use the environment for cover, but just as you've seen in many a next-gen title, cover dissolves under pervasive gunfire, so he'll have to keep moving. He'll also have blind fire at his disposal; we saw him take down a guard without even peeking his head up.

During the gunfight, which took another five minutes, we noticed that ultimately, the firefight wasn't particularly out of the ordinary. In the past, GTA fans have shot their way out of countless missions throughout Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. However, between the visuals (admittedly, the framerate dropped out during some of the more intense portions, but there's still time to tweak) and the new shooting system, things just felt much more intense. While an old GTA shootout felt routine, this shootout felt as new and intense to watch as what we've seen from Gears, or even Kane & Lynch's homage to "Heat."

With that, our demo of GTA IV came to a close. If there was one thing that Rockstar emphasized most throughout the demo, it's that Rockstar North has been hard at work on devising a living, breathing Liberty City in which Niko is a small fish. In the GTA III Trilogy (all those PS2 and Xbox games you logged in hours playing), the experience seemed to put you in the shoes of a character, and the world centered around him. Eventually, you'd take that character all the way to the top and conquer the world. The idea behind GTA IV is that Niko is part of a truly grandiose world. He'll never conquer Liberty City, but if he can survive and dig himself out of whatever hole he's in, it will be a success. From what we've seen, he seems to blend into it all, but until we've got hands-on time, we won't know for sure just how much the team has succeeded. In the meantime, we're looking forward to seeing more of the new Liberty City.