Grand Theft Auto IV - Trailers

GTA IV LEAKED GAMEPLAY

SECOND Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer High Quality

Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer 1 "Things Will Be Different"

The Character: Niko Bellic

Niko Bellic is the main character and is described by Rockstar as "tough." His home was in Eastern Europe, and he likely may never have traveled to Liberty City if it wasn't for his cousin Roman who is described as a "friendly buffoon" by Rockstar. Life wasn't going well, and Bellic turns up in Liberty City because he's been receiving e-mails from Roman that are full of lies about how great he is doing in America. Roman is actually in trouble.

However, Niko knows that Roman is the only person he knows in America. Roman serves as one of his main friends, motivations, and connections at the start of the game. Unlike San Andreas, players won't get a chance to see Bellic in his homeland. You will see his life unfold from the moment he steps into Liberty City.

Why Go Back To Liberty City?

Dan Houser, the creative vice president of Rockstar Games had the following answer when asked why Liberty City was chosen for GTA IV:

"[New York City] is an environment we felt had never been done to the level we were envisioning it in a video game. From looking at all of the locations, this was the one that really stood out to us, and really had that impact. It has all of these iconic things that you couldn't put into a game before."

In another magazine article, Houser explained again with this:

"We've always wanted to do New York properly. With GTA III, we were dealing with so many technical issues and design issues about making a game like that, that we didn't really think that trying to make somewhere like a real place was important at the time and then we discovered later that that gave an added element of content to the place.

We've got a full time team of researchers and photographers in the office in New York who get emails from the artists in Scotland saying, "Hey can you find out what this building's like, or what the traffic flow's like around here?" or the designers want to find out how the law systems work. We wouldn't be as confident doing a next-gen game the way we wanted, somewhere we didn't have a base."

Sam Houser's E3 2005 Speech

Sam Houser, President of Rockstar Games, spoke at the E3 2005 Sony Conference on video. While he didn't mention that he was necessarily talking about the GTA franchise, it was fairly obvious that he was. You can download the video or watch it below. Below the video window is the transcript.



"I think what we're most looking forward to creating in a PlayStation 3 game is a truly-realized, truly-immersive living, breathing world. This is what we live for. You know, every five or six years, these amazing companies like Sony comes along and gives you this wonderful new piece of equipment that allows you to start unlocking your vision and unlocking the dream that you've been having for however long. With Cell and with PlayStation 3, we feel very excited and very confident that we're going to be able to absolutely push the limits of what can be created and the experiences that we can immerse our audience in. We really know that we're going to be able to go to the next level in terms of realistic simulations and realistic immersion combined with incredible narrative...incredible storytelling, and those two elements combined are what are going to create the experiences of the future."

One year after this video was released, it was officially announced that, although GTA IV would still come out for the PlayStation 3, Rockstar Games began favoring Microsoft and the Xbox 360 by letting them make the aforementioned announcement as well as giving the console two exclusive pieces of episodic content which are due out in 2008.