# * The game will no longer have Ammu Nation shops.
# * That sleazy girl with the lollipop? Her name is Lola and she's a prostitute, not a showgirl, and those are not yellow feathers in her hair that's ... never mind.
# * Staying true to the New York City feel, cabs will be available in the game. Once in a cab, you can mark any point on the map and it will take you there. Alternately, there will be context sensitive cab situations -- for example, if you're hungry, the cab will take you to the nearest restaurant; if you're injured, you will be taken to the hospital.
# * The new in-game GPS system not only will put your points of destination on the map, but there will also be a line showing you the best route to get there.
# * After hopping in a cab, you can "fast travel" to where you need to be, or you can enjoy the view of the city. This is something that was also mentioned during the E3 demo, but I neglected to mention because I fell asleep.
---Translated Info---
- It's "only" in 720p
- First scene (page2): Niko Bellic is standing in the middle of Times Square in the morning. The first walk brings Niko to his wellknown "Little Jabob". Because our GTA IV hero needs a weapon - and Little Jacob has his whole trunk full of those. Bellic grabs a 9mm pistol. "Today one can't simply go to a gunshop and buy pistols in NY. You have to get them in some other way", says Rockstar about the tradition Ammunation shops.
- Something about Niko being told by a cop called Francis McReary to go to a Goldberg, Ligner & Shyster. Goldberg wants to trick Niko by killing him at the meeting? Or vice versa.
- You can chill out in the backseat while in the cab (to get used to the locale and the routes etc)
- When you have heat, cabs won't take you!!
- Niko goes to a internetcafe to look up the website of Goldberg, Ligner & Shyster on a virtual browser.
- You have to go to officier McReary again for a second mission (?)
- You get a mission that takes several days to complete in gametime, in the meantime you can do submissions. [I guess you have to show up in time to complete the main mission?]
- Sounds complicated? "Nah, the life of a criminal isn't that easy these days" says Rockstar
- Niko's PDA (i'll call it PDA here) has: Phone, Messenger, Organizer, Photo-camera and GPS in one [photo submissions?]
- While on the road to McReary, Niko's PDA rings, Mr. Goldberg's secretary Karin is on: "I can put you in a meeting at 1400 hours". Niko opens the calender on his PDA and the appointment is inserted automatically. It will also remind you of your appointments so you won't forget them. Rockstar says it normally takes longer to get to the date, but it was shortened for the presentation.
- So what happens when you fail to reach it on time? "No problem, Karen whines a bit and gives Niko a new date for another appointment"
- We reach Officier McReary and see the first cutscene (omg!). The dialogue and cutscenes belong to the highlights of GTA and we're not surprised that once again, the voice actors and scriptwriters have done a great job
- After a few sentences, it already becomes clear what kind of "hard dog" Nike Bellic is and how unsympathetic works. A new thing is, that how thanks to HD-graphics the facial animation shows more emotions and brings the script to better justice.
SPOILER WARNUUUUUNG!
- In the middle of the talk between Niko Bellic and Officer McReary Rockstar interrupts the session, saying "here are some spoilers and we don't want to spoil the fun". Zhe germans care not.
- In short: a curious photographer made pics of McReary, and you have to steal his memory stick. McReary has courteously made a vehicle available to us, a Porsche Carrera (wtf?). Or at least, that is what it looks like, there are no real licensed cars in GTA4. It's called Comet instead.
- There are all kinds of cars in Liberty City, Ferrari's, BMW's, Mustangs, Delivery Trucks, SUV's, Volkswagen Jetta's (well known in the USA) trashtrucks etc.
- So after having walked and sat in the back, we can now drive ourselves! The camera angle switches. The article says it's a bit better suited and shows more depth in the default setting. It has also been moved to the left a bit (????)
- The Rockstar boys appear to notice our light scepsis and don't agree with it (or something). "One sites in a car in the left seat, so the perspective is more realistic". We will have to see how fast players can get used to it. [Aside from that you can also set it to the old setting, it seems, and you also have some other camera POVs which were not shown]
- In our drive to the photographer, our new and improved GPS helps. It doesn't just show the location as a dot, it shows the route to our target (Saints Row Shiiiiiiit!!!111one). There will be no more cases of entering oneway streets in GTA [which was apparently some kind of problem once?]
- Back to our photographer mission. We reach a viewing platform and when we are standing on it, our PDA beeps: one new SMS. The text message is from officir McReary, and it contains the cellnumber of the photographer. Niko copies the number from the SMS to his contactlist.
- Our hero does not know what the photographer looks like. And there are so many people walking around with camera's! We call the number and look at who grabs and answers his phone: AHA! We see someone who puts his cell to his ear - and shortly afterwards, a "Hello?" sounds through the speakers.
- We have a short conversation with the dude that answered, hang up and check the dude. And yes: he puts his phone away as well!
- Now it has to go fast. We run to the figure who also happened to wear a camera. Two headbutts later the chaos is complete. People go nuts and shout and stuff. We grab the memory stick out of the camera of our guy and run off. Here we notice that there are 3 speeds while afoot: walking, jogging and running. When Niko sprints, he gets out of breath after a while (?). Something about how he has 8 walking directions and how Niko controls the Curvewalk? My german fails here.
- Also new: our new GPS/radar shows cops that are on foot and in vehicles. There are also 2 area's or circles on the map: 1 in which all cops have major aggro and one where they are more mellowed out. When you leave the outer area/circle/ring, you are practically homefree. The size of the area depends on the severity of your crime AND how many witnesses saw you at the crimescene.
- Since Niko is sill on foot, we have to look for a car to get away. This is where you notice that there are now a lot more cars that are locked. Although this is logical since it is now 2007. No problem for Niko Bellic though: with the pistol-butt, he simply smashes the window of the driver's door and enters the car. Now to get out of here!
- Hmm, we shouted WIN too early: we don't have the key! (omg). So Niko will first have to short-circuit the car which takes about 3 more seconds. Finally the engine starts and we are off. Since no-one has seen us enter/steal the car, the searchradius of the cops narrows itself. In a few seconds we are home free.
- The first mission is now completed. Still we don't have time to slack around, because our PDA calender reminds us about the meeting at Goldberg, Ligner & Shyster. Because we can't show up there wearing our (see pics) shitty clothes, we quickly drive to "Perseus": an upper class shop for Men's clothing. The shoppinng of clothes is now also more realistic. You now go through the clothes on their and buy them, instead of entering a menu like in GTA:SA [ie: more immersion blablabla].
- We call a cab and let us be driven to the the building where we have to go. We announce ourselves at the desk and go to the office of Mr. Goldberg on the second floor.
- The next cutscene follows. Mr. Goldberg appears to be impressed by our clothing. No wonder, because he apparently is looking for someone to do his dirty jobs. "Niko, you are someone who sees the world for what it is, acknoledges problems for what they are and gets rid of them. I like that"
[this will surely lead to hilarity when we find out the real lines in English]
- At some point we get tired of his talk. We point the 9mm and target his face. Mr. Goldberg at first shrinks back, and then tries to act cool: "Oh, tough move, Niko. But pistols don't scare em. You know: guns don't kill people, only VIDEOGAMES KILL PEOPLE" The germans go mad with laughter [I died].
- We laugh once, and shoot twice, and Mr. Goldberg flies backwards through the window of his office into the depths.
- Two loud shots in the office, one body on the street... it doesn't take 10 seconds for the first security officers and cops to arrive.
What follows, dear readers, is the most actionpacked and exciting shooting that we have ever lived through in the history of the GTA series. This is where the entirely new controls come in.
(can you confirm this Alex: "Dazu trägt vor allem die vollkommen neue Steuerung bei" ?)
- We leave the office, press our back against the wall and carefully move towareds the stairs. There, there are the first two guards who are hiding/covered behind a glass door.
- We keep our head down, crouch forward and use a Putzwagen/snack-trolley as cover (Alex?
). But by now the first Domestos bottles fly off, shot by enemy fire. Unimpressed we move our gun up and let loose a couple of rounds.
- The blind-fire seems to have an effect: the guards get back behind the cover of the door. This is our chance! We move out of our cover and fire at the glass door. The glass plates shatter, and we have free aim at the guards. While we down the first guard with a headshot, we shoot the other guard in the leg. When he tried to recover and shoot, we serve him with a two bullet dessert. It worked.
- Now we reach the staircase and get into a hot firefight with the smart cops. One, who stands on the escalator, we hit in the knee. He collapses and rolls over a couple of times while he falls down the escalator. But even this guy tries to get up again, so we'll have to help him a bit with that.
- When we reach ground level, we grab us an Uzi. And we need it as well, since there are already some cops waiting outside the building - and shout (or shoot?) from outside into the building.
- End of our presentation. First reaction: Wow! Even though we weren't able to play the game ourselves, it became clear that the old controls, the AI and the targeting system can't be recognized [ie: the new ones are a much better]. Finally one can put GTA among the best shooters in these aspects. Finally do weapons switches work not like a necessary evil but as exciting and revolutionary (or something)
- Dear graphics fetishists (literal translation), we have kept you waiting for long enough now, but ofcourse you all want to know how good GTA4 really looks. The writers refer to the screenshots and the VIDEO that was added to the magazine(?) [if true, Alex go upload that vid!!
]. A picture can tell a thousand words. The important thing to remember is that GTA 4 really looks like this, that neither the pictures nor the trailer haven been edited in any way. This is all ingame!
- To sum it up, the graphic-style is a lot more realistic then with the previous GTA's. Rockstar's RAGE-Engine, which we saw first with Tirschtennis (Table Tennis) is really put to work here. Especially the authentic lighting and shadow effects and the reflections on the car's wax, or the wet ground, look really natural. But also on the PS3 and Xbox360, Rockstar works with different filters to give the game it's own Look.
- Liberty City works incredibly alive. The streets and sidewalks are populated, people talk on their cellphones, smoke, entertain eachother, make pictures etc etc. The Hot Dog vendor tries to get Niko to come to his stand by shouting at him. If you kick or drive against a trashcan, it rolls around with correct physics (finally!!!!!!!!).
- In Saint's Row, people first noticed this detail: when you are close to a car, you hear soft carradio music. When you open the door, the music gets louder (truly next-gen). Concerning music, Rockstar is still keeping tight-lipped. We were told that the russian rocksongs and spacey trance tracks from the demo were just placeholders. Following rumors, Rockstar will probably rely less on Hits and more on unknown bands and artists for the music..
- Even though the graphics were FLAWLESS, Rockstar admits that there are still problems with stuff like Popups, Clipping and Ruckeln (glitches or artifacts?) but that these will be ironed out in the following months.
FINAL THOUGHTS
- Even though San Andreas showed its graphical age, it still sold 20 millions because of its gameplay. Does this mean that GTA4 will be the perfect game with the HD graphics? That is still to early to say. A lot of aspects were not shown in the presentation and were not answered in the Questions round afterwards.
- Still, when we have 100 euros ($138, 70 pounds) to bet on which game might be the first to reach the 100% perfect score with our rating system, we'd bet 10 euro on Resident Evil 5 and the remaining 90 euro on GTA4!
That was all, hope there was some info there for you. Maybe Alex wants to look through it to point out some bad translations, but I think most of the content made it.
Game sounds cool btw, can't wait to play it!
(i took)
