Grand Theft Auto IV

Grand Theft Auto IV (also known as GTA IV or GTA 4) is the upcoming eleventh installment of the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise, announced for release by Rockstar Games on October 16, 2007 in the United States for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game will run on the RAGE game engine, which also powered Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis.

Debut trailer: "Things Will Be Different"

The first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV was released on March 29, 2007 at 22:00 UTC. At the time the trailer was released, Rockstar's servers for the trailer's official website became almost immediately overloaded.

The trailer is 1:03 in length and features the main protagonist Niko Bellic, who has a brief monologue: "Life is complicated; I killed people, smuggled people, sold people. Perhaps here, things will be different." The trailer ends with the "IV" and fades out to the Rockstar logo.

The trailer features several New York City landmarks, including locations and structures resembling the Coney Island Cyclone, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the MetLife Building (branded as "GetaLife"). The trailer uses a similar cinematic style to Godfrey Reggio's 1982 documentary film Koyaanisqatsi and used Philip Glass's original music from the film (a section of the track "Pruit Igoe") as well as emulated time-lapsed filming.

Rockstar has stated that all the trailer's footage is in high-definition 720p, generated real-time by the game's RAGE engine, running on an actual game console.

In-game content

Plot

Niko Bellic is an Eastern European immigrant in his mid-thirties, who has come to Liberty City to pursue the "American Dream". Niko was persuaded to move to Liberty City by his cousin Roman, who claimed in multiple e-mails to Niko that he was living a fabulous life, with two women, four hot tubs and fifteen sports cars; but he was in fact telling lies to hide his own failures.

Roman is the only person Niko knows in Liberty City to begin with, and is one of his major connections in the first part of the game. Niko is a tough character, whereas Roman is friendly. Roman is heavily in debt and a lot of people are after him. He desperately needs Niko's support, hence the reason he deceived Niko into traveling to Liberty City. They are constantly bickering. It is later revealed that Niko has also been avoiding other, as yet undisclosed, problems at home.

According to Dan Houser, "virtually none" of the characters from the previous games are returning, as a lot of them are dead anyway.

Locations

Rockstar has recreated four of the five boroughs in New York City, as well as parts of New Jersey. Broker is the GTA IV equivalent of Brooklyn, Manhattan is now called Algonquin, Queens is now Dukes, the Bronx is Bohan, and New Jersey is Alderney (after the Channel Island of the same name). The map is smaller than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but more detailed, and will in fact be larger than any previous individual cities in the GTA series. The developers are still deciding whether bridges will be used to cordon off certain areas, by way of blocking access to cross them.

The GTA IV equivalent of the Statue of Liberty is called the "Statue of Happiness", and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is known as "BOABO" (Beneath the Offramp of the Algoquin Bridge Overpass).

Another building called "Twitchins", the GTA version of Brooklyn's Domino's Sugar Factory, is in the game.

A Staten Island-esque area will not be featured in the game for the reason that Rockstar believes it would not be fun to play there; Dan Houser also states that that there would not be any "dead spots" or "irrelevant space" within Liberty City.

Pedestrians are much more intelligent, realistic and diverse, using mobile phones, cash machines, eating snacks, reading newspapers and interacting with each other through laughter and threatening remarks. Pedestrians and traffic flow will also be different depending on the time of day.

Dan Houser has also confirmed that an area resembling Central Park will be in the game.

It has been announced that some meetings in the game will take place high in the office buildings of skyscrapers.