Grand Theft Auto IV
Jan 23, 2008Since
We were ushered into a dark room alongside the likes of our cohorts at IGN and Team Xbox to check out the advancements made since last July. Although we were blown away by the forty-five minutes that we saw back then, we did have some gripes, namely the frame rate, which choked up from time to time throughout that demo. It looks like the team is addressing those complaints quite a bit. Also, this new demo introduced us to some of the characters that you might have seen in
The action in this demo kicked off with "Search & Delete" in a mechanic's garage in Broker, Liberty City's equivalent of Brooklyn. In the cut-scene, Niko politely asks a mechanic for some help before simply kicking him in the ribs to get him out from underneath the car. The irritated grease monkey calls on his boss, Brucie, to come out from his office. Brucie, if you've seen the newest trailer, is the excitable gentleman roughly forty seconds in. He's just as full of profanity and homophobia as he is excitement and muscle, which we imagine will make for a very entertaining outcome, in GTA tradition, once Niko's done with his missions. He sends Niko on a mission to rub out an informant named Lyle Rivas, who's planning to snitch out Brucie's criminal enterprises.
Our Rockstar rep took Niko outside of Brucie's garage and started randomly shooting to draw attention to himself. We couldn't help but notice the attention paid to recreating some of Brooklyn's warehouse districts, which look livelier than in other city-themed sandbox games. After a few of LCPD's finest showed up, Niko jacked a car and drove outside of the police coverage area. No demo mission would be complete without unveiling a new feature, and in this case, it's what you can do once you've gotten your hands on a police car. Once Niko's away from the search radius, he turns on a police computer, brings up Rivas' file, and finds his last known whereabouts.
With that, Niko was en route to Rivas' and Rockstar had time to show off how GTA IV's vehicles will utilize GPS to ease the process of navigating Liberty City's vast terrain. You'll be able to set waypoints, and in nicer cars you'll even have voice systems that tell you where to turn. Once Niko locates Rivas' hideout, the action jumps to another cut-scene of Rivas escaping through a window. In the tradition of Claude the Mute, Tommy Vercetti and Carl Johnson, Niko is thrust into a "chase n' whack" mission.
Here we saw how GTA IV utilizes a new chase camera. In past titles, you'd have a reticule over the targeted car that indicated which vehicle to attack. In this game, you'll now be able to focus on a target with the Chase Cam. You'll finally have the ability to target vehicles as you drive just like you would on foot. The NPC AI looks to be a bit smarter as well, as Rivas sideswiped a truck en route to Bohan (the Bronx) to knock its cargo loose and block Niko's pursuit. The deformation and scratches on cars are also heightened in comparison to past games. Niko manages to beat Rivas' car into submission on a Bohan intersection, but not before setting his own on fire. It looks like flaming cars take a little longer to explode than in the likes of San Andreas, but they're still ticking time bombs.
Our Rockstar rep finishes off the mission in style by leaping out of the fiery chassis seconds before explosion and driving it into a hapless Rivas, who's on foot at this point. It's worth noting that in our last preview, we mentioned how jarring the shooting animations were. That extends to car-diving animations, too. When Niko leaps from his speeding vehicle, it's more realistic. CJ might've dusted himself off and kept going, but it'll take a few seconds before Niko recovers from rolling out of a moving car.
From there the demo moved into activities, something that Rockstar hinted at six months ago. GTA IV will focus on building interpersonal relationships more than past games. You can pull up your cell phone, make a call, and go hang out with friends. This will do more than give you a series of time-wasting mini-games; it will make it significantly easier to get arms and aid from the likes of Caribbean gun runner Little Jacob or Niko's cousin Roman.
As an example (which will undoubtedly piss off the likes of M.A.D.D.), Niko calls up Roman to hang out and drink. After getting trashed, Niko stumbles to his car to drive Roman home; in the final product, the controls will be just as impaired as the onscreen action, which faintly blurs and tilts to simulate inebriation. Back on foot, we got another glimpse of the Natural Motion technology under GTA IV's proverbial hood. As our anti-hero meandered around the sidewalk and collided with his cousin, team members pointed out that none of the animation has been motion-captured or pre-rendered; Natural Motion's technology is AI-based and reacts to the environment in different ways. Therefore, the animation is sentient enough to know that it should bump into things in the environment, but is just ignorant enough to entertain us with a completely socially unacceptable real-life activity.
The next mission, "Deconstruction for Beginners" not only showed off the combat tweaks of GTA IV, it also demonstrated the new branching dialogue system. If you fail a mission, which one of the reps did by accidentally ricocheting a grenade back to himself, you'll restart it, but the discussion en route to your task changes slightly. It's all slightly rephrased so that you get the same information, but it's not quite as redundant. It's still unclear, however, how many dialogue branches you'll have per mission, so if you suck like a sponge, you might test the limits of it.
In "Deconstruction for Beginners," Playboy X, the gentleman in the rainbow hoodie at the thirty-second point of the "Move Up, Ladies" trailer, is your employer. Playboy is an ambitious hustler who's worked his way up from the projects to the penthouses of Liberty City, and he's trying to break into real estate. We sense from the mission's opening cut-scene, in which Playboy half-heartedly welcomes a former cohort back from prison, that there's plenty of dramatic backstory to chew on with this character. There's a bit of red tape, however, as mafia-backed unions are preventing him from breaking ground on land development. It's up to Niko to pump some fear into La Cosa Nostra through any means necessary.
It's a multi-tiered mission that reminded us a bit of "Bomb tha Base" in GTA III. Niko starts off on a rooftop sniping union muscle standing on the upper parts of construction cranes. You're probably used to seeing outrageous decapitations with the sniper rifle in old games. In this mission, we saw mobsters dropping and instinctively firing guns as they died, or flopping off cranes onto SUVs and even landing nastily onto pavement. It's all part of the Natural Motion tech, which changes the death animations according to where the bullet hits.
From there he moves down to the construction site to take down union leaders. It's here that Rockstar explained the pressure-sensitive targeting system of GTA IV. You'll squeeze one of the triggers to autolock on someone and hold it halfway to take a more manual approach. You'll be able to blind-fire, too, if necessary. Also, in close-quarters combat, blood spatters on the camera as either Niko or an NPC take a beatdown. Niko also has destructible cover to worry about as he moves from point to point throughout the site.
It's worth noting, though, that GTA IV is still a work in progress. There are staples of the traditional GTA experience that haven't left this installment so far, such as pop-up on the horizon. We don't expect it to leave by the next time we see the game. Also, during "Deconstruction for Beginners," we noticed some erratic AI patterns that felt like the usual franchise quirks, such as when Niko shoots a ladder-scaling union boss, and rather than climbing the ladder slowly due to his wound, he re-climbs it at normal speed. Rockstar mentioned that it's a bug that'll be fixed in the final product. It'll be tough to tell until we have final builds. At this point, they're as noticeable as some of San Andreas' AI quirks, but likely aren't gamebreaking.
The final mission of the sprawling demo showed us Alderney, the neighboring state to Liberty City. Just like cities such as Jersey City and Elizabeth that are on the cusp of New York, Alderney's urban locales look like bustling cities but without the tight density of Manhattan. It's in Alderney City that Niko picks up "Truck Hustle." The gist of the mission has Niko jacking a drug-filled truck from Triad gangsters and delivering it to mobster Phil Bell's son-in-law.
As a last bonus for the long, detailed demo, Rockstar decided to show off boats. Yes, for those of you wondering, Niko can swim. From one of Liberty City's piers, Niko fetches an inflatable boat and cruises around the waters of Liberty City. If so desired, you'll be able to jump out of one boat and jack another. Also, if you're not in the mood to navigate by car, you'll be able to travel within Liberty City via boat.
Grand Theft Auto IV looks like its improvements will come not only through the visual horsepower of new technology, but also in utilizing it for convenience. There could be some minor annoyances that seem to be making their way over from the older games, such as pop-up and quirky AI, but as a whole the conveniences outweigh our concerns. Anyone who's got dozens of hours invested into San Andreas will be ecstatic with the new stuff Rockstar North plans to implement to keep things fresher and more exciting. Whether it's GPS navigation, new combat additions or branching dialogue, GTA IV looks to evolve the series beyond merely giving it glossier visuals. We can't wait to check it out again soon.
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Niko hops behind the wheel and drives the streets of Algonquin. And yes, operating a motor vehicle is severely impaired in this taboo-crushing segment. Thankfully, though your drunken controls are a mess, the GPS still functions. Apparently if you get hammered, it takes a few real-life minutes for the effects to wear off. The end result of it all, however, pays you back with more safe havens and stockpiles.
After slaying a mob of ten Triads, Niko latches onto the back of the truck as the last remaining gangster attempts a getaway. It's here that truck-climbing, yet another new ability, is demonstrated. It's not available for every vehicle, but is scripted into some missions. We couldn't tell if the feature will utilize the analog sticks or button-mashing, but it will involve some effort and skill to not only climb a moving truck, but stay on top as drivers try to shake Niko off. Ultimately Niko jumps through the passenger window, dumps the driver, and makes the delivery.