GTA IV

Grand Theft Auto IV was released on 29 April 2008 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Rockstar North developed it together with Rockstar Toronto, which also ported the Windows version. That one came out on 2 December 2008 in North America and 3 December in Europe. It is the sixth main entry in the series and the eleventh overall.

Story and protagonist

In Rockstar's synopsis, Niko Bellic has just arrived from Europe, hoping to leave his past behind. His cousin Roman dreams of making a fortune in Liberty City. Debt drags both of them into the criminal underworld instead.

Niko is an Eastern European war veteran, and he is also looking for the man who betrayed his unit years earlier. Michael Hollick voices him. The story is set in 2008, the same year the game was released.

Liberty City

This version of Liberty City is built on New York. Broker stands in for Brooklyn, Dukes for Queens, Bohan for the Bronx and Algonquin for Manhattan. The neighbouring state of Alderney takes the place of New Jersey.

Writer Dan Houser called the city "the biggest character" of the game. The map is smaller than San Andreas, but denser, more vertical and more detailed. For research, Rockstar's team took more than 100,000 photographs in New York. Art director Aaron Garbut estimated the number at around 250,000.

Development

Preliminary work started in November 2004, a month after San Andreas. Rockstar North's core team had 220 people, other Rockstar studios helped, and more than 1,000 people were involved overall. The budget passed US$100 million, which made it one of the most expensive games ever made at the time.

The script by Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries ran to about 1,000 pages. It needed roughly 660 actors and more than 80,000 lines of dialogue. The game runs on Rockstar's own RAGE engine. It uses NaturalMotion's Euphoria software to animate character physics.

What changed in gameplay

GTA IV pushed the series toward a more realistic, more detailed style. It dropped the role-playing side of San Andreas, such as gym training and character weight.

In their place came a cover system, free aiming at body parts, and a mobile phone for taking missions and calling contacts. Vehicles got an optional first-person view. Online multiplayer takes up to 32 players, in both cooperative and competitive modes.

Music

Music supervisor Ivan Pavlovich picked songs that define present-day New York. To clear the rights for the radio, Rockstar contacted more than 2,000 people.

Announcement and delay

Microsoft's Peter Moore announced the game at E3 2006 by showing a temporary GTA IV tattoo on his arm. The first trailer followed on 29 March 2007. It is credited with starting the Rickrolling meme.

The game was first dated 16 October 2007. It slipped into 2008, and the stated reason was technical difficulties with the PS3 version.

Reception and sales

GTA IV holds a Metascore of 98 on both PS3 and Xbox 360. It earned US$310 million on its first day and US$500 million in its first week, which made it the fastest-selling entertainment product in history at the time. On 13 May 2008 it broke three Guinness World Records, one of them for the highest-grossing video game in 24 hours. By 2013 it had sold more than 25 million copies.

At the 2008 Spike Video Game Awards it won Game of the Year and Best Action Adventure Game. Michael Hollick took Best Performance by a Human Male.

Controversies

Mothers Against Drunk Driving criticised the option to drive drunk. New York City officials objected to the city serving as the game's model. Activist lawyer Jack Thompson also campaigned against the game. Take-Two had sued him in 2007, and the two sides settled.

Episodes and re-releases

Two episodes followed, first on Xbox 360 under a US$50 million deal with Microsoft. The Lost and Damned came out on 17 February 2009 and The Ballad of Gay Tony on 29 October 2009. In April 2010 they were bundled as Episodes from Liberty City for PS3 and Windows.

Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition, with the main game and both episodes, went on sale for PS3 and Xbox 360 on 26 October 2010 in North America. The Xbox 360 version and its episodes became playable on Xbox One through backward compatibility on 9 February 2017.

Legacy

GTA IV started the series' HD Universe, a continuity separate from the earlier games. Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online continued it.