GTA IV - Loads of Details Finally Disclosed

When GTA IV Trailer was announced, the world went up in flames. Well, not really, but GTA fans did anyway. After waiting for half a month or so, to get a glimpse at the most highly anticipated trailer for an Xbox 360 and PS3 title, Rockstar indulged fans with one whole minute of footage. Some of it in-game. You can't see much in a one-minute video, so Rockstar finally decided to shed some light on the matter. Here are some highlighted fragments of GameInformer's exclusive on Grand Theft Auto IV, provided by Kotaku:

"The protagonist's name is Niko Bellic - an Eastern European immigrant who has come to Liberty City to live the "American Dream." The game is set in Liberty City in 2007, but it is bigger than the Liberty City we saw in GTA III." So then, he wasn't Russian after all. The name suggests a Balkan nationality.

"The GTA IV equivalent of the Statue of Liberty is called the Statue of Happiness..."(huh... neat!) "Broker is the GTA IV equivalent of Brooklyn, Manhattan is now called Algonquin, Queens is now Dukes, the Bronx is Bohan, and New Jersey is Alderney. The map is smaller than San Andreas, but considerably more detailed. No countryside or desert, we are led to believe." The fact that a map of a GTA title for a next-gen console is more detailed was only obvious, but why make it smaller? What, no disk space?

Also, Rockstar says that players will experience more freedom of choice, and more sense of control over their destiny, as GTA IV has a quite different storyline that can have any number of outcomes. You can actually talk to people in person or by cell phones even, (hello present time!) and there are plenty of other ways of keeping informed on what's going on in the game. "In previous GTA games you were like a slave because you had to constantly take orders from people when doing missions. There is still an element of that in GTA IV, but you can also choose how you want to spend your time."

Way to go Rockstar! Now that's what fans were hoping to hear. There are plenty of other details about the game as you can imagine, yet the upper mentioned features and options seem to be the most relevant in regards to a GTA title, so if you're a fan of the third-person series, you now know what to expect when the game ships in October 16th 2007.