After the truly pathetic demo of Grand Theft Auto IV at Take-Two Interactive's press conference at this year's E3 ("Hi, this is GTA IV and it looks nice! We're going to drive really slowly down the street and OK BYE THANKS FOR BEING HERE AT 8AM!"), I'm hungry for more information. Rockstar has historically been very guarded with GTA information leading up to its release, so any morsel of information usually leaves me in a fetal position, salivating all over myself.
German videogames magazine, Games Aktuell, has snagged some exclusive GTA IV screens and info. Since picking up a copy of Pimsluer's German language course and a flight to Deutschland would cost you an arm and a leg, it's really swell that someone over at German GTA fan site, gtaengine.de, was able to scan these. Subsequently, that person had a bag thrown over his head in the middle of the night, and was dragged off to a dingy underground location to be tortured by bourgeois thrill seekers. Or the scans were just removed.
We don't fear the German governent or their copyright laws, and we're damned excited about this game, so here are the scans in all of their glory. Hit the jump for some new GTA IV intel that's been gathered from the articles text, which is written in secret German moon language.
[Via NeoGAF]
- * 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.
Are there any German speaking Destructoid readers? Let us know in the comments if you can extract some more interesting information! It's like a fun, Saturday morning game!
LAUNCH GALLERY (9 IMAGES)
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Contest:
11:24 AM on 07.21.2007 | 
AWESOME!@
- 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.
- 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 (????)
- 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!
- 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.
- 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.
(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? :D ). 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)
- 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.
Dtoid readers rule.
- 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! Enjoy your saturday Destructoid ;)
Good job Proffesor Pew.
Destructoid rocks, because not only are there German speakers (all manner of languages, really) in good supply, every last one is willing to translate magazine scans for my ignorant American ass. I wish I knew something besides English, so I could give back.
To anyone who still has to pass some foreign language exam which seems utterly useless: maybe one day you'll find delicious info in mag-scans like these ;)
"The streets and sidewalks are populated, people talk on their cellphones, smoke, entertain each other, make pictures etc etc. The Hot Dog vendor tries to get Niko to come to his stand by shouting at him."
this is what i've been waiting for. too many games with cities are just "dead," (Spider-Man 3, Rogue Galaxy, etc.) or there's people but they do nothing (Saint's Row, FFXII, etc.). to have a living city? this, to me, is next-gen.
I'm pretty positive bet you 90 euros.
[img)http://download.chip.eu/en/GTA-IV-Trailer-2_564668.html?tab=5&show=7[/img]