The GTA4 thread

[GMT 389]

Originally posted by: El Burro Some of those new screens just look like concept art... they only time i've even thought that with another game is Company of Heroes.

I looked at the videos as well, it looks like some have been done on 360 and others have been done on PS3... there was a major difference graphics wise in some of them (the  Irish Pub vid especially).

Rockstar assure us that theres no difference between the platforms, but I can guarentee you there will be.quote>

Unfortunately, I gotta agree with you, there'll be optical differences between the ps3 and the 360 (and I hope its not alike nfs prostreet), although I think the obvious differences in the new videos is a result of different times of recording. There're a couple of things in some videos that look just too beta to be for real.

And maranello, I'm just too proud having wrecked you with all the info... j/k

[BurroDiablo 222]

I was talking about conecpt art before... on closer inspection with some of these pictures like this one, it looks suspiciously like they've been Photoshopping their screenshots with the paint daubs filter or something.  Maybe their trying to compensate for some bad quality Anti-Aliasing...

[BurroDiablo 222]

Found this video showing some extra footage Rockstar ommited from the opening sequence of the Website... its not much, just a few seconds of nice footage. Still, gives you a feel of the graphics at night, you can even hear the brakes on the Taxi when it stops...

[toxicpiano 125]

Official site has a map if anyone hasn't seen it.

[GMT 389]

Burro, this video is cool, to bad its just youtube quality :-(

EDIT: here's the non-youtube-quality video at rockstarwatch.net

toxicpiano: if you speaking of the map with the outlines, it's hard not to see it ;-) or did you discover another map?

[toxicpiano 125]

Originally posted by: GMT Burro, this video is cool, to bad its just youtube quality :-(

EDIT: here's the non-youtube-quality video at rockstarwatch.net

toxicpiano: if you speaking of the map with the outlines, it's hard not to see it ;-) or did you discover another map?quote>

Lol, no I just looked at the site, haven't been on it for a week or 2

[GMT 389]

oh, ok. I just thought you saw something I missed :-)

[ilikehotdogsalot 308]

2 more months!

[Maranello575 5]

Great. 2 months. Its gonna feel more like 2 years have passed before this game comes out.
Damn theory of relativity.

[SC4Noobie 5]

Ok guys, can't wait! It really does feel like forever though.

[BurroDiablo 222]

Oh momma... i've been getting GTA craving all week from these, been playing GTAIII alot which is shameful, I know

[GMT 389]

i so can't wait... these last 2 months feel like forever!!

I even started to build modelkits to bridge the gap... damn, I should start playing sc4 again...

Anyways.

There's some new content to be seen at the official site:

LCDP teaser

Weazel News teaser

a hybrid car teaser, called "Dilettante" from "Karin Automobile" (worth 39.999$, "chicks love electric gadgets"... hehe I love GTA-style humor) with an interesting video that's intro reminds of a movie by a former us presidential candiate and also shows: how it looks when cars get jacked, expensive sportscars, and it says that this Dilettante is "100% customizable" ... maybe a hint for tuning as in GTA:SA?

[BurroDiablo 222]

I liked the new 'Phil Bell' vid, show's a a guy getting blown away by an explosion... and, has to have been shot on a PS3 because the Graphics are CRAZY...

[GMT 389]

yea, the video is cool.

the graphics... I hope they're kinda special or downscaled, maybe late beta, and not close to final... it looks crazy, just as you say

[Glenni 1,444]

Yeah they are pretty good, but i wouldn't call them crazy either, pretty much the norm of ps3 graphics... I happen to own one with a sexy HDTV

[football_fever 6]

it says that this Dilettante is "100% customizable" ... maybe a hint for tuning as in GTA:SA?quote>

I really hope they'll keep modding around. That was a sweet sweet part of SA that would be an easy thing to carry over. I always hoped that adding certain things to your modded car would make it perform differently, but I don't want to ask for too much when they're already delivering the game of the century

[SimRabbit 48]

does any body know if its coming out for the PC?

[BurroDiablo 222]

Originally posted by: SimRabbit does any body know if its coming out for the PC?quote>

It will be since Microsoft now own some of the rights, but probably not untill next year...

[SimRabbit 48]

thanks goodness, i wil have an Nvidia 9600 graphics card by then.

[GMT 389]

there's no pc release announced yet.

EDIT: just a short info:

the additional content that is yet exclusively available for the 360, will be released august first.

the name? creativity blows you off *caugh*

GTA Episode 1

[GMT 389]

well then, the previously announced preview is online for a handfull of hours now at kikizo.com, and here's what the 5 pages report of the first webbased media that gets in the favour of a hands-on of the "biggest game in 2008" says (some old, some new stuff):

first of all, the "demo" they played is just three weeks old as of today, so it's pretty close to what we get as a customer

second of all, since this is a 360 preview, the controls ingame (button: on foot - in car):

a: run (as in SA) - hand brake

b: push/nodge - cinematic camera

x: jump/climb - cycle weapons

y: enter car - exit car

left stick: move - steer

right stick: camera - camera/aim

click left: crouch - horn

click right: look behind

left trigger: lock on - brake

right trigger: - shoot/attack - accelerate

left bumper: call cab - shoot

right bumper: cover - handbrake

d-pad up: use phone

d-pad left/right: cycle weapons - cycle radiostations

so much for that, now to the game itself:

- improved usability, structure and pacing compared to GTA:SA, it's more compelling, weightier and more on the physical side

- Liberty City represents a big, vivid and dynamic city, but not too big to "play" there

- better character's (as in their related stories) and better voice acting than in SA

- a friendship scale (sounds pretty much the sims to me)

- people are p...d off if you set up a meeting and don't appear there (also affects the friendship level)

- wanted level depends on the crime and the witnesses

- mission accessibility and choice is different than in SA

- cellphone as an actively usable device

- NO loading time ingame, raising the level of gaming experience to a whole new level

- the retry option now comes right in front of the hospital with the d-pad and not where you triggered the mission for the first time (or leave it aside and do another available mission first)

- you still have to unlock burb after burb

- unlocking the second part happens way earlier than in SA

- all in all, the impression of free roaming is much higher than it was before

- 18(!) radiostations covering hiphop, rock, hardcore, reggae, jaz, funk, pop, modern jamaican, dance... there's also a specific eastern european station

- the great voice acting also counts for ingame and not just for cutscenes, it seems that there's much more variety in random talks

- the first few missions seem to be a fireworks of funny dialoges and situations, especially when Little Jacob (LJ) is around

- mission markers are yellow arrows pointing to the floor and no red coronas as before

- the lines between what is a mission and what isn't are not as clear drawn as in previous titles

(e.g. you get a call from Vlad offering work, his marker is added to the map but no mission is triggered, means you don't have to go there tho you might feel like you have to)

- Niko's character goes much deeper than CJ's, with more personality and more background-story to get lost in (do I believe this? I was literally caught up in CJ's "live", and now the new character offers even more??)

- the Banshee looks like a Viper (hm... we had this already, tho the viper was called beast back then...)

- the look of the city seems to be gorgeous, the tester did a mission that requires to cross a bridge at sunset and at night, revealing a "spectacular view"

- you can't steal trains anymore, but ride them

-

in cars

- cars move more realistic than in SA (maybe no sudden lane changes on the highway just the moment you want to overtake the car)

- there's a much higher difference in the behaviour of the cars

- driving with the traffic is much more realistic, as in much more difficult than before (as the writer says: rewarding)

- powerslides are more difficult than in SA where it was just a matter of speed, h

[BurroDiablo 222]

Well, the good outweighs the bad but i'm pretty bummed that you can't use the Trunk of your car.

[GMT 389]

Originally posted by: El Burro Well, the good outweighs the bad but i'm pretty bummed that you can't use the Trunk of your car.quote>

yea, me too.

it was one of the first announced features and everybody was like "wow, finally" and now they say "sorry, you can't" and everybody goes like "duh"

well, apart from that, I'm so happy about this preview cuz it really helped to get an idea of the feeling because it's the first preview that's not based on a presentation but on an real testing (under supervisory of a R* member, with available developer-cheats and stuff, and some restrictions to what they are allowed to do an what not).

And it feels like they really got the ballance between copying old stuff and creating new stuff when it comes to gameplay.

And the fact that the flaws are minor in quantity and quality is something very good to read, if you take a look at the dimensions of the game (in all metaphoric and literal meanings)...

so, I now can't wait for it any longer. I even started my own calculation of times, making today exactly 2 months b.gta.r., my id card runs till 2 days b.gta.r. ... and I gonna vanish at the very gta.r. until at least 2 months a.gta.r.

[GMT 389]

so, a quick input for the weekend:

there'll be no demo-version of GTA4. not that there's ever been a demo of a gta, but you can never be sure so...

a spokesman of R* said that this would only cause trouble, and since exploring the town takes a very big role in GTA4 (just as in all gtas), they (quote) "would give away half the the city for free", what's certainly not what they have in mind.

further, GTA4 is rated 18 in Germany from the USK (the ESRB equivalent)

I wouldn't give too much to this since our rating authority got a little picky on games like this cuz a politician fool once started a root-of-all-evil rampage camapign against "killerspiele" (killer-games... what he means are shooter like CS) and suddenly all games with action content where killerspiele...

long story short, it would be the equivalent of an M rating, but that has nothing to say about the content of the game.

[saltandsauce 0]

yet again it is out for the really expensive consoles and not for PC until 2010

[dogma555 187]

^do you have a link for that?? thats really bad news, i was under the impression it was only  a year..

Im personally a little skeptic about GTA4. I absolutely LOVED gta3, i think for its time and what it brought to the table it absolutely blew gamers away.. and then improved on it in Vice City, and then fine tuned everything in San Andreas.. so besides the obvious graphical enhancements, i will be very suprised if Rockstar can deliver the quality game that GTA3 was.. but if they do, im getting a ps3 lol

[Wrightguy0 40]

Have no fear, the storyline in GTA4 will be deeper than in previous installments

[GMT 389]

as for the pc release, there's still no date announced, but nothing said about no release either.

just as it was with GTA:SA, there was no date announced for like half a year and then it was like a few weeks between announcement and release (I don't know about earlier titles' pc releases, I only know they are available, but never cared about the time delay between console and pc)

as for the quality of the GTA4, I'm convinced it's even better than GTA:SA. R* themselves say so (ok, they have to, but...), the screenshots look awesome, the videos aswell, and all the magazines (either web or print) agree that it's better. Of course, you have to judge for yourself, but every new GTA title was a large step forward, so why not now? (magazines even handle it as one of the top titles, if not THE top title this year, and there surely be a lot of awesome games released this year, as far as one can tell from the announcements)

In addition, just as wrightguy said already, storylines are much deeper, even on those the characters have (either niko or ALL the guys he meets).

Plus the spitload of GTA-style humor, which R* says was one of the top points to bring to the new game, and a visual quality and diversity a GTA-title has never seen before...

trust me, this gonna blow us gamers away yet again.

And I'm gonna blow myself away if I don't find something to bridge the gap until april 29th...

[Maranello575 5]

I just hope the humour is as good as in Vice City. Tommy Vercetti and his sarcasm always cracked me up, just added a little extra flavour to the game.

I'm just not happy that Microsoft have their hands in on the project, you just know they gonna start pushing the game towards the X-Box leaving PS at a disadvantage.
example:

I hear about "Exclusive Episodic Downloadable Content" for the XBOX 360? What is this, will it cost money and will this content be released for Playstation 3?

At the moment we don't know exactly what this content is. It has been widely speculated to be extra missions (an expansion to the story perhaps), extra map areas. The term "Episodic" seems to imply it will be something along these lines. Microsoft are making a big deal out of it, so it's bound to be something quite big. Nothing has been announced on how much this content will cost or if it will cost at all.

As regards to this content becoming available on the PS3, it's unlikely, especially if Microsoft are putting up money for this. Microsoft are trying to convince the audience that the XBOX 360 is the platform for GTAIV by securing this exclusive content. Microsoft have made a big deal that this content is exclusive to the 360, so it appears they have tied up a deal with Rockstar for it to remain that way. 

[GMT 389]

Yea, the 360 exclusive content really bothers me aswell.

But then again, things are so shortbreathed in the games genre, I bet the ps3-store will offer the same additional content after a while.

speaking of it, GTA4 will run at a constant 30fps on both systems. Not as high end as CoD4 or Burnout Paradise, but then again, if you think about all the animations and stuff happening at the same time on a GTA4 screen, a fixed 30fps is still an amazing value.

further, the PS3 development is a little behind the 360's, but they say it's ready untill april 29th