Hidden depths to GTA4

[SCLASS]

The point has been made before but I thought it was worth a thread. One glaringly obvious point of prior GTAs has been the haphazard approach to the sizes of in game cars to peds and the shape of the cars themselves.

 

Cars reached the chin of CJ in SA, Sedan cars bts, effectively making them significantly taller than IRL, this looked rather odd, thankfully it appears '4' is setting the record straight.

 

What I am most pleased about though is the design of the cars themselves... though i prefer German cars, ive always loved the crown vic, probably as its the archetypal 'yank tank', one of the last surviving ones along with Linc Towncar and a few others. R*has done a terrific job with the crown vic in '4', not just borrowing design cues (ala E34 5 series in GTA3 Sentinel and W126 Benz in SA) but instead put an exact copy in (more or less).

 

The strange proportions of some of the cars in SA and prior have gone leaving us with real looking vehicles. The Comet looks great, and much more like a 911 than the VC equiv....cars are not so much caricatures now...

 

Buildings too, seem to have more homogenous window sizes, gone are the often wildy off scaled buildings of prior GTAs,...all these small changes make everything suddenly seem 'living / breathing'.. '4' will be the first ever game to actually do what it says on the tin and provide a realistic city to roam.

 

I believe issues of game length, size of liberty city and many other 'issues' that we have will evaporate as soon as we experience the game, Id even go as far as saying this is the first 'next gen' game, as Euphoria, to me, is the biggest advancement in gaming since going 3D. We live with physics and are so used to the consequences of inertia and speed IRL that when we play videogames a lack of 'respect' towards such simple processes is glaring and suspension of belief is hard to achieve.

 

All in all, this game could not involve a single crime and it would still be great, no subject matter, or story, just give me a Crown vic, and id happily be a cabbie - with physics/gfx providing more depth than any plot....

Edited February 8, 2008 by SCLASS

[Fulltilt27]

nice read A Short Version to yours in my reply is Yes the game will be Great

[SCLASS]

lol, yeah ina roundabout way , what i mean. Gotta have my daily rant

[gamefarter]

 

Buildings too, seem to have more homogenous window sizes, gone are the often wildy off scaled buildings of prior GTAs,...all these small changes make everything suddenly seem 'living / breathing'.. '4' will be the first ever game to actually do what it says on the tin and provide a realistic city to roam.

 

I believe issues of game length, size of liberty city and many other 'issues' that we have will evaporate as soon as we experience the game, Id even go as far as saying this is the first 'next gen' game, as Euphoria, to me, is the biggest advancement in gaming since going 3D. We live with physics and are so used to the consequences of inertia and speed IRL that when we play videogames a lack of 'respect' towards such simple processes is glaring and suspension of belief is hard to achieve.

 

 

Good point about the size of the windows. Also, I agree with you about the Euphoria being "One Giant Leap for Mankind" (playing video games)

[SCLASS]

of course, with it not a gfx issue, devs probably wont ever consider physics as important as gfx....can you sell physics to the 'average' gamer, who probably wouldnt notice....

[NinjaJones]

Buildings too, seem to have more homogenous window sizes, gone are the often wildy off scaled buildings of prior GTAs,...all these small changes make everything suddenly seem 'living / breathing'.. '4' will be the first ever game to actually do what it says on the tin and provide a realistic city to roam.

 

I believe issues of game length, size of liberty city and many other 'issues' that we have will evaporate as soon as we experience the game, Id even go as far as saying this is the first 'next gen' game, as Euphoria, to me, is the biggest advancement in gaming since going 3D. We live with physics and are so used to the consequences of inertia and speed IRL that when we play videogames a lack of 'respect' towards such simple processes is glaring and suspension of belief is hard to achieve.

 

 

Good point about the size of the windows. Also, I agree with you about the Euphoria being "One Giant Leap for Mankind" (playing video games)

I agree on that point too...Euphoria amazes me! I just can't get it out of my head how they make the characters react realistically without anyone controlling them! Like that video of the character on the rope bridge and the rocks being dropped on him and he's using his arms and weight to balence himself then he grabs onto the bridge when he falls!! It's amazing what technology can do these days...if we've gone from GTA III quality to GTA IV quality in 10 years imagine where we'll be in another 10!

[ceedot]

You sound like c.ompton, ranting on about how he tosses over the Queen Vic cabs and police vehicles.

 

 

But ye, the cars and buildings seem very much to scale, and this all does make the game look as real as ever.

[tidycat]

 

One glaringly obvious point of prior GTAs has been the haphazard approach to the sizes of in game cars to peds and the shape of the cars themselves.

 

Cars reached the chin of CJ in SA, Sedan cars bts, effectively making them significantly taller than IRL, this looked rather odd, thankfully it appears '4' is setting the record straight.

One game that did an excellent job at scaling objects accurately was True Crime: New York City. I didn't care much for the game itself, but I spent a few enjoyable hours running around the city and I thought it was "eerily realistic" the way the characters, buildings, and vehicles all seemed to be at the exact right proportions to one another. Worth a rental, at least.

[RONIN1191]

One glaringly obvious point of prior GTAs has been the haphazard approach to the sizes of in game cars to peds and the shape of the cars themselves.

 

Cars reached the chin of CJ in SA, Sedan cars bts, effectively making them significantly taller than IRL, this looked rather odd, thankfully it appears '4' is setting the record straight.

One game that did an excellent job at scaling objects accurately was True Crime: New York City. I didn't care much for the game itself, but I spent a few enjoyable hours running around the city and I thought it was "eerily realistic" the way the characters, buildings, and vehicles all seemed to be at the exact right proportions to one another. Worth a rental, at least.

I agree with you there; the game itself was chock full of bugs but once you got it running smoothly, it was pretty entertaining. I preferred that version over the LA version, even tho the LA one was larger by quite a bit and was a longer game to boot. I just didn't dig the character, Nick Kang or whatever.

 

TC:NYC also boasted a GPS accurate map layout of Manhattan, with Central Park included. That was VERY cool. I wished you could enter more of the buildings but isn't that always the case?

 

I mean, in GTA3 the amount of random buildings you could actually enter was very small, and they, R*, have steadily been improving on that. We were up to, what, 15 in VC? In SA it was even more- I liked how your safehouses didn't all look exactly the same (even tho there wasn't much variety, at least the locales didn't all look alike). So now, where suspension of belief has become a chore in itself, we're looking for games that mimic IRL more and more.

 

I was watching Family Guy the other night and there was a scene where they were in a D&B type setting; Chris is on a racing car game and Peter's on a 'Stuck Behind a Schoolbus' game, honking the horn talking about how great it was. I guess my rant is just that I don't want games to become so realistic that 'Adventures in Babysitting' the Game becomes a best seller.