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GTA IV Information Leaked From Game Informer

Posted by Zonk on Wed Apr 11, 2007 02:51 PM
from the everybody-can-stop-talking-about-this-for-a-while-now dept.
Entertainment Games
The next issue of Game Informer magazine has been scanned and submitted to the legions of eager GTA fans out there. Right there on the cover is the mook from the GTA IV trailer, and the British Gaming Blog has a synopsis of the information passed around in the scans. "The game will only take place in a single city, so Rockstar has taken out aircraft to give the city a more realistic feel. Motorbikes however, are firmly engraved in the Grand Theft Auto formula, and will be present in IV. With the 2007, present day time scale, the radio station will have a lot in common with GTA 3 or Saints Row; not so much bands and songs you know well, but with modern music conventions that give an air of authenticity. Also like THQ's Saints Row, the game will load when you power up the game, and then never again; even breaks from internal to external locations are gone." Though I'm sure it's less interesting to you than the Game Informer information, GameDaily has comments from Take-Two as the company tries to shake off its recent problems. The money phrase from new chairman Strauss Zelnick: 'GTA is Our James Bond'.
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[+] GTA IV Trailer Released, Slows Sites 127 comments
Mr_Congeniality writes "The much-anticipated trailer for the next chapter in the Grand Theft Auto series has been released. Rockstar's servers, including the one that hosts Rockstar's homepage, was completely overloaded with traffic last night as a result. Users desperately flocking to other websites like GTANet and GTA4.net, but even these websites were overloaded by the interest level. If these sites are still slow, try GameTrailers or GameVideos as an alternative. For analysis of the video, CVG has ten things you may have missed, while 1up's editors offer their opinions on what they saw."
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  • The thing about NYC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fistfullast33l (819270) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @03:00PM (#18693165) Homepage Journal
    is the scale - so many people don't realize how huge NYC really is when you include all 5 boroughs. If the idea of other cities is dropped for Staten Island (difficult because you can't really get there directly from Manhattan by car) and even outer Brooklyn/Queens and the Bronx, you'll have a ton of real estate to cover. Almost to the point where I doubt they'll be able to do even close to 1:1 scale. I would venture that the game would have to be about the size of Oblivion (possibly a little smaller) to achieve that. The thing that gives Oblivion a truly large feel is the fact that you don't have a fast car, you have a moderately fast horse or slow walking, so it seems bigger than it really is.
    • is the scale - so many people don't realize how huge NYC really is when you include all 5 boroughs.

      NYC is physically smaller than Los Angeles, which Los Santos in San Andreas was based on. So you can't take the size of the real city as indicative of anything whatsoever. It will no doubt be much smaller than the real NYC, and I believe they even say it's smaller than the world in San Andreas.

      btw, since when is an outright magazine article "leaked" information? This information was put there intentionally
      • My understanding is that a copy of the magazine itself was scanned and leaked before it's normal publication date, but the /. post isn't really too clear.
    • Almost forgot - another thing to note about NYC is the ethnicity lines in certain neighborhoods. NYC has always been known for its ethnic diversity, and it's always segregated somehow. The use of Russians, for instance, is interesting because most Russian populations today live in the Brighton Beach and Coney Island area of Brooklyn and also in distant Queens as well. To my knowledge, there isn't a distinctly Russian neighborhood in Manhattan (someone can correct me). So they almost have to commit to th

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kelbear (870538)
      True Crime: Streets of NYC may have tried to mimic NYC's streets like True Crime: Streets of LA.

      However, GTAIV is not set in NYC, it's set in Liberty City, an imaginary city that's just taking thematic inspirations from existing cities.

  • Jack Thompson wins (Score:4, Insightful)

    by User 956 (568564) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @03:06PM (#18693229) Homepage
    Rockstar has taken out aircraft to give the city a more realistic feel.

    and not at all because they're worried some press wanker will call it a "terrorism simulator".

    If you remember, aircraft were cut from GTAIII (also set in "new york") for a similar reason, since the game came out pretty soon after 9/11.
    • Except, of course, that GTAIII had aircraft. Actually taking off and flying the Dodo was somewhat impractical, but possible. While you could actually fly it into a building, it didn't damage the building (since nothing damaged buildings in GTAIII), and if it blew up, the explosion wasn't any more significant than a car blowing up.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by User 956 (568564)
        Except, of course, that GTAIII had aircraft. Actually taking off and flying the Dodo was somewhat impractical, but possible.

        Yeah, it was possible, but difficult to fly the airplane with no wings. They clipped the wings for the aforementioned reason (9/11 paranoia), and removed the mission(s) that were slated to have used the plane in its full form.

        That's completely different from the range of civilian/military aircraft available in later games, especially San Andreas. There's no reason they couldn't

  • I think that the lack of the open environments is going to get tired quickly. Driving around at high speeds is one of my favorite things to do. The other is fly around cities in the helicopters, which is also going away. I guess I don't need to run out and buy an Xbox 360, I can wait for this one to hit PC.

    • Where'd you see that helicopters are going away? There's nothing that says this in the linked article.
      • It said aircraft are going away. It didn't say "airplanes". Helicopters are a member of class Aircraft.
        • That's a rather myopic interpretation. Consider previous installments of the game - GTA3 and VC. Both took place in a single city, a relatively small area, and both had helicopters.

          San Andreas was much larger, and offered significantly more flight options - including "real" planes. Saying that, due to the smaller size of the game aircraft were removed, strongly says (to me) that just "real" planes were removed.

          Call me optimistic or whatever, but I'll be stunned if all modes of flight are removed from the p
            • Only on the PC. Maybe your version didn't have helicopters, but I *strongly* doubt it.

              Here's some proof:

              http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/be/GTA3 boxcover.jpg [wikimedia.org]
              There's a helicopter on the cover of the game.

              http://www.gouranga.com/images/gta3/gta3_102.jpg [gouranga.com]
              Helicopter in-game.

              http://www.gouranga.com/images/gta3/gta3_199.jpg [gouranga.com]
              Another shot of in-game helicopters.

              http://www.gta3.com/index.php?zone=review1 [gta3.com]
              "Ok then, now, the other ways to travel: boat, plane, train, subway, and on foot. It is scarce that you u

                  • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                    by Lightwarrior (73124)
                    You're acting like a troll and you got what you deserve.

                    Original quote:
                    "The game will only take place in a single city, so Rockstar has taken out aircraft to give the city a more realistic feel."

                    The uber-parent said (paraphrased):
                    "One of my favorite things to do in GTA games is to fly around cities in the helicopters, which is going away."

                    I asked him where it said they were removing helicopters - which I thought was quite reasonable - and you embarked on this literal crusade. Helicopters have been in the G
            • My copy sure had helicopters in it; first there were the Helicopters that would come after me when I raised a major ruckus....then towards the end of the game it was possible to steal a military helicopter if you did things properly though I never did it nor did I see anyone do it so it may have just been Internet lore...

              And that dodo thing sucked ass :)
  • ...is will we PC gamers have to wait a year longer to play it? Anybody know?

    On topic: One city is plenty fine, especially given what I've seen so far. I'd be interested to see how much of the interior spaces are accessible. Anybody have info on that?

    I hope they at least keep helicopters, and especially a gunship. I gotta have SOMETHING to strafe interstates with.
  • I read somewhere else (I believe Kotaku), that the lack of planes lead people to believe that there would be no countryside area, which is kind of disappointing (but obviously not a confirmation). One of my favorite parts of San Andreas was cruising around a mountain on a hog listening to the country station. It actually felt like I was there...
    • I HATED the countryside in San Andreas, it's the reason I stoped playing the game. In particular having missions that frequently involved driving across 2/3 of the map really started to annoy me.
      • A fast motorcycle could cover the distances pretty quickly. You can't say you didn't like the offroad car races though. Come on. The countryside MADE that game, IMO.

        -matthew
  • GTA: Baghdad.

    I mean, think about it.
      • Apparently, you are one of the many fools that judge things simply based on hardware...Microsoft aren't the only ones who should be accused of adding bloat to their software you know...

        See, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, people had to actually be careful about how much memory and processing power they used...granted, they still need to be careful today, but I can assure you that programmers now do not code NEARLY as tight as they did 20 years ago.

        What's up with that?

    • I found a new music genre... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LanMan04 (790429) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @03:40PM (#18693757) Homepage
      GTA3's "K-Jah" radio station introduced me to both Dub [wikipedia.org] and Scientist [wikipedia.org], and I have been a huge fan of both the artist and the genre ever since. Heck, I would sit around just listening to that station on the game while not even playing it. Then I figured out who Scientist is and started getting real albums...

      On a related note, WipeOut XL [wikipedia.org] (Wipeout 2097 for you non-Americans) introduced me to and got me hooked on techno (more specifically Big Beat) back in 1996, which eventually turned into a love-affair with all kinds of electronic music.

      I love it when games change my life.

    • Well, so long as they don't follow the musical lead of San Andreas, I'll be happy. It might have been a great game in every other respect, but it had the worst soundtrack of the series.

    • I agree. One of the moments in GTA:SA that really got me going was this mission-- I think you were supposed to steal a helicopter-- where you had to get into a heavily-gaurded area. It didn't really give you instructions, as far as I can remember, about how you needed to accomplish this, but I just flew a plane over the area, jumped out, and sky-dove to my target, opening my parachute as late as possible to that I'd be a hard target to hit. The experience was impressive.

      I suspect that the real reason mi

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