Grand Theft Auto IV: First Look

You’re probably not going to like Grand Theft Auto IV. Maybe not at first, anyway.

When you find out, for instance, that it won’t have airplanes, jetpacks, bicycles, an entire sprawling multi-city state to roam around, or many of the other little features San Andreas managed to cram onto a single DVD, your kneejerk reaction may be, “Well, that sucks.”

After all, the delightfully gluttonous excess of the last entry in the lightning-rod Grand Theft Auto series quickly and definitively raised our expectations for what can be jammed into an open-world experience.

But once you get past the bullet points and realize what Scottish studio Rockstar North is trying to do with the next-generation reboot of gaming’s most successful franchise — i.e., to make a “more realistic, more human experience” and next-gen–ify everything beyond just the graphics — you start to get it. And when you get it, your mind begins to reel at the possibilities.

We were given a 20-minute, highly controlled demonstration of an early build of the game being played in real time on Xbox 360. The session began with a look at your avatar, Eastern European import Niko Bellic, standing inside the Liberty City taxi depot of his cousin, Roman. Niko’s relative has lured him to the United States with promises of money, cars, and women, but in reality he’s in a world of trouble and needs his cousin’s help.

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Yes, GTA IV takes place in Liberty City. The series is returning to its 3D roots, but you won’t recognize anything you remember from its previous iteration. Whereas the Xbox Liberty City was a three-island metropolis loosely based on real-life New York City, Xbox 360’s present-day Liberty City sticks much closer to real-life Manhattan. It features a stunningly detailed five-part Big Apple standin with re-creations of such landmarks as the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the MetLife Building (sarcastically renamed the GetaLife building), and the Statue of Liberty (a.k.a. the Statue of Happiness), to name a few we were shown or told about.

“The influence is New York,” Rockstar told us matter-of-factly.

The virtual Manhattan is dubbed Algonquin in the new Liberty City, while all the boroughs — Bohan (the Bronx), Dukes (Queens), Broker (Brooklyn), and suburban Alderney (North Jersey) — are connected to this central hub by bridges. Together they comprise a land mass that is bigger than any of the three cities in San Andreas but smaller than the whole of the previous game’s Fake-ifornia.

But before you bemoan the shrinking real estate, ask yourself: Do we really need a sandbox world bigger than San Andreas? And more to the point: Do we want one?

After seeing GTA IV in motion, we’d wholeheartedly answer “no.” Bigger isn’t always better — a maxim Rockstar aims to prove by upping the ante on everything within the space they do have. While the square mileage may be down, the scale and detail are significantly up…both literally and figuratively.

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