Grand Theft Auto IV - 4 Days Left, Even More Stuff

It’s just four more days to the official launch of Grand Theft Auto IV, and three major gaming sites gaming sites IGN, GameSpot, GameSpy and 1up, have yet again offered Q&A Interviews (as with any day this week) with the Rockstar Games and Rockstar North crew, as well as previews.

Let’s jump straight right in, shall we? IGN has posted Preview on Grand Theft Auto IV’s inter-character relationship system, which comes with 18 new screenshots, click here to read. Also, 1up, GameSpy and GameSpot also had their Q&A interview articles published, with even more screenshots! Click here for the 1up interview, here for the GameSpy article and and here for the GameSpot Q&A. You can read some quotes below, and the rest of the screenshots here. Enjoy!

1up: How was it for Natural Motion to be working on GTA?TR: It’s been a great experience, and an unbelievable title to debut euphoria in. I think our joint initial goals were a lot more modest than what we ended up with. Everyone, especially Sam, has been pushing the envelope further and further throughout development. We wanted to give people something they truly hadn’t seen before, and we ended up with much more euphoria in the game than originally planned: More behaviors, more characters, more crazy stuff. I think both companies and teams developed an excellent relationship through the development, and we’re really proud of what we’ve achieved together.The open world nature of GTAIV lends itself to moments of random brilliance — how does Euphoria play into the experience?

AF: Euphoria is perfect for an open world game. We can’t produce all the canned animation required to produce realistic results for all the huge variety of situations that GTA presents us with. Euphoria is able to do this as it can use the results from the physics engine to alter its behaviors to respond to the environment. Euphoria is one of the main sources of the moments of random brilliance now.

SR: The main thing that Euphoria adds is the ability for the characters in the game to react in a convincing way to any combination of situations that could happen in the game world, of which there are loads! Peds running across the road to get away and getting hit by a car, or someone getting shot while standing on a set of stairs and loosing their footing to tumble all the way down to the bottom are just two examples I can think of.

GameSpot: How many different weapons are there in the GTAIV?Imran Sarwar: There are 15 weapons in total, and you can now pick up objects from the street, such as bricks, and throw them. There’s a good amount included for all situations and playing styles.GS: For the RPG, particularly the way the trajectory spirals, how do you code for such seemingly random movement?

IS: The RPG projectiles are initially fired in a straight line, but they can ricochet and deviate from glancing collisions. The spiraling of the smoke trail is done in the visual effects system. We have a lot of power and flexibility in controlling the position and behavior of all particles, so we can give the trail a nice curling behavior while also adding gravity and in-game wind forces to each particle.

IGN: “The moment Niko arrives in Liberty City he is met by his cousin, Roman. This crucial relationship is just one of many you will develop while playing GTA IV. These friendships — either with the rough and tumble men of the city or its lovely ladies — evolve initially through the story. But it’s your decision whether or not to pursue these friendships beyond the story missions.”

GameSpy: “Mission Replays: One of the biggest complaints people had about the previous games concerned the mission structure, specifically what happened when you failed one. With a few exceptions, failing a mission would force the player to backtrack all the way to the original locale. Now, all you’ve got to do to replay a mission is bring up your trusty cell phone and open your text messages to find a handy “Replay Mission” option. Along with the taxi cabs, this bodes well for casual fans who were frustrated by the previous games.”

Plus, PlayStation fan magazine PlayStation World has given yet another perfect score of 10/10 to Grand Theft Auto IV. The issue also comes with Grand Theft Auto IV stickers and a “Making of GTA IV” booklet. Although I’m an Xbox 360 owner, I’ll definitely pick this magazine up. If you’re interested, you should too. I’m sure the stickers and booklet will be a welcome addition.

And, as if we haven’t gotten enough of Grand Theft Auto IV (although we’ll never get enough… it is seriously the best video game ever made!), images of the Special Edition boxart has emerged from Amazon. It will be longer than standard boxarts, due to it being a cardboard box holding all the Special Edition goodies in place, as metioned here The artwork on the PlayStation 3 box and Xbox 360 box is also different.

With only four more days left to wait, make sure you’ve subscribed to our feed to be updated on Grand Theft Auto IV news when they come out! Want to find out more about this great game? Check out the Grand Theft Auto IV section on the sidebar. Stay tuned!

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