PREVIEW | GTA IV complete article in GameInformer
"Life is complicated.
I killed people. Smuggled people. Sold people.
Perhaps here, things will be different."
These words, tellingly and optimistically spoken by Grand Theft Auto IV's protagonist, Niko Bellic, don't just speak of a tarnished soul that sees opportunity in a new city. They point directly towards the future of this series.
Like Bellic, Grand Theft Auto is traveling to a place where many people have gone to find the so-called "American Dream." Some people call it the Capital of the World. Others have learned that it is the City That Never Sleeps. No matter what you call it, New York City is a place where anything can happen. It is the biggest stage in the world, and the perfect place to usher in the next step for the series.
This new entry marks a number of dramatic changes for the series, but it isn't Grand Theft Auto merging with the real world. New York City doesn't exist in this universe, and it likely never will. The Big Apple is simply being used as an inspirational blueprint for the re-creation of Liberty City, a place some gamers have goten to know better than their hometowns. While the original Liberty City took many visual cues from New York City, this dramatic reinvention of the fictional metropolis seeks to capture the feel of the world's greatest city like never before.
Despite its incredibly large stature, the next installment in the series has remained one of the best kept secrets in the world. Rumors have swirled and speculation has been raised, but nothing that you've heard or read is even close to the truth. Some people thought Grand Theft Auto IV was going to be become a massively multiplayer experience; others were certain the game would take place across the entire world. A few misinformed souls even thought the next iteration would be set in space. The truth of the matter, however, is that's it's going back to the city that made the series a phenomenon.
The new Liberty City is a bustling metropolis that is dense on the streets and intimidating vertically. Many of New York City's iconic sights find new homes here, and may look strikingly similar, but are twisted to fit into the Grand Theft Auto world. The MetLife building now bears the name Getalife, the Statue of Liberty is now the Statue of Happiness, and DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is called BOABO (Beneath the Offramp of the Algonquin Bridge Overpass).
"We live here," notes the game's vice president of creative Dan Houser. "We've been here for a number of years. Even the guys in Scotland spend lots of time here with us. It was an environment we felt had never been done to the level we were envisioning it in a video game. From looking at all 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 couldn't put into a game before."
Within Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar North has recreated four of the five boroughs that make up New York City, as well as a section of New Jersey. It's a smaller geographical mass than San Andreas, but not an inch of this world is wasted or dedicated to vast stretches of country or desert. It's a tightly packed metropolis that captures the eye with its decades of world-class architecture, sunblocking towers, and extraordinary walks of life. In the GTA universe, Brooklyn has been transformed to Broker, Manhattan has mutated into Algonquin, Queens is now Dukes, The Bronx is Bohan, and New Jersey has become Alderney.
"It's not the full city," injects Houser. "It's an approximation thereof. We make a city that feels like the real thing, but is perfectly tuned for gameplay in the broadest sense. The world is not designed to be a video game. We are trying to make a video game that feels like the world, but still plays like a video game."
The design of the city and the missions that unfold within it are designed hand-in-hand and complement each other perfectly. Everything in thi world is here for a reason, wheather it's directly tied to gameplay or simply there to create atmosphere.
"We are trying to give the city next-generation life. Trying to give it the feeling of being there. The feeling of - which to us is always a big part of a Grand Theft Auto game - walking the streets or driving them slowly, watching the life go by, trying to make that a lot more engaging." says Houser. "We are trying to make this something that is more fun, more believable, more alive it's ever been. That's something we've done a huge amount of work on. To give lots of varied behaviors to the pedestrians, make them more context sensitive, more dependant on the environment. Something that we've done bits of in the past, and really blow that out. When you see the streets, and see that this peron's smoking, another person is on the phone, and this other person is sitting on the bench, it looks amazing. It feels a lot more real than just a lot of peo
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