GTA IV takes flight

By Tom Bramwell Published 24 April, 2007

Helicopters and other info.

If you're still lamenting the loss of flight in Grand Theft Auto IV then you might as well stop, because the game has helicopters after all.

That's according to Game Informer's Andrew Reiner, the only journalist who's seen the game running. "There are no airplanes in the game, but flying is still there. One means of this is the helicopter. As Dan [Houser, of Rockstar] pointed out, this is just one city and a plane really doesn't fit into that very well for gameplay. Flying is still very much a large part of the game," he told fan-site GTANet.

And while Reiner only got to see the game for 15 minutes, it was enough to convince him of its quality - and showcase some neat new features, like a new method of car-jacking. "From what I was shown, the only new element was breaking the window of the car to get in. The animation for this was awesome, and something I wish I had seen more than once," he revealed.

"The car I saw was newer in make - which was evidenced in both the beautiful crimson sheen and suspension that handled pot holes and variances in the road with ease. Now, I only saw one car, but it really did have that new car look to it. It'll be interesting to see how Rockstar handles the shocks and struts for other vehicles in the game."

Rockstar is still playing a lot close to its chest, but there was room for some clarification. You'll be able to go out with women and climb telephone poles for sure, and a cheeky smile or two hinted at returning characters, and the possible presence of boats. Meanwhile, it doesn't sound like you'll be able to build up a property portfolio the way you can in Vice City and San Andreas, and thankfully it also doesn't sound like main character Niko spends as much time in the gym as our old friend Carl Johnson.

Anyway, for more titbits, turn your eyes to GTANet, or check out the trailer on Eurogamer TV one more time. Because you have already seen it, right?

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (44) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Red-Moose #1 5 years ago

    The helicopters will be the little RC ones.

    The new car jacking method involves going to somebody's house, taking the keys by breaking in and when they wake up you gag them and put them in the "trunk", driving off like a maniac.

  • Mr_Brown #2 5 years ago

    Helicopters and boats were available in previous GTA's...hows this exciting? All this news tells us is it will have things from previous GTA's and alot of things GTA SA had cut out...sounds great already!

    Still really hope this will be good...can't see how they're gonna make this bigger than San Andreas though, well not at the moment anyway.
    Edited by Mr_Brown at 24/04/07 @ 12:25

  • suj #3 5 years ago

    It'll have to be something really special - e.g. really emersive and feel very new and stuff considering all the stuff its lacking the previous 2 GTA's had. It should be interesting none the less.
    Edited by suj at 24/04/07 @ 12:32

  • Steroyd #4 5 years ago

    Since when was there a loss of flight i thought planes would be bog standard in GTA especially a "next gen" GTA. :/

  • gizmo #5 5 years ago

    Go out with women?

    FFS.

  • Caimbeul #6 5 years ago

    i hope they dont control like those stupid RC ones. Bloody impossible they were!

  • Venatio Verified Community & Gaming Manager, Eurogamer Network #7 5 years ago

    /\/\[]T[]R81K35?

  • AndyboyH #8 5 years ago

    @Egster

    Rather than the unrealistic pole climbing displayed in the Hot Coffee mod? ;)

  • Darren #9 5 years ago

    I'm kind of happy that the new GTA will focus on one large city which means Rockstar can cram it full of detail and make it seem alive. I always felt San Andreas was a little too ambitious for the last-gen systems and that the game seemed big just for the sake of it and too spread out, a bit diluted if you like. Much preferred Vice City which to date is my fave GTA game. Great 80s soundtrack too.

  • InfiniteFury #10 5 years ago

    If these helicopters come equipped with rail-mounted machine guns and a couple of rocket launchers, I'm willing to retract my earlier disappointment.

  • FmCUK #11 5 years ago

    Hopefully the helicopters will still have rudder control (as SA and VC did), the oversimplification by removing those in Just Cause was a big annoyance for me.

    I'd welcome a helicopter with a winch system ala Mercenaries also :D

  • glaeken #12 5 years ago

    Excellent comedy Blue Ray comment. Keep up the good work.

  • justsomeone #13 5 years ago

    gosh - breaking windows, new cars that look new, a helicopter, climbing poles and going out with women. that's awsome - if that's all there is to this game, it'll be worth the asking price. i'm amazed that guy was able to hold his load for the full 15 minutes without making a right old mess in his briefs.

    is it just me, or are we throwing a deal too many superlatives, and getting a touch overly excited, by genuinely mundane features in this game? crackdown had folks throwing cars at one another and leaping up and off skyscapers - a tad more exciting? maybe it's just me.

    personally, i can see myself getting more excited if this version of GTA doesn't have the idiotic save mechanism and generally irritating game mechanics.

  • TONYgr #14 5 years ago

    ONLY ONE CITY?WITHOUT AIRPLANES?ARE THEY SERIUS?ARE THEY STUPID OR SOMETHING?WITH PS-2 THEY CREATED SAN ANDREAS AND WITH PS-3 THEY CREATING THIS?STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • SBfistfun #15 5 years ago

    Like OMGzor teh car looked new

    Utter prick

  • NthSimulachum #16 5 years ago

    Can you crash the helicopter in to buildings? Or does Team America show up to stop you?

  • RobertFoster #17 5 years ago

    "You'll be able to go out with women"

    Bollocks to that. The only good thing about the girlfriends in San Andreas was beating someone to death with a double dong.

  • Lonestar #18 5 years ago

    Just like Half Life 2, I have a feeling when I get around to playing this, it'll be a big fat "Meh (!)" from me.

  • Fairlane #19 5 years ago

    please no more of that saving-house-driving crap

  • simiankid #20 5 years ago

    I WANTZ hANGL1edrZ!

    /is serious.

  • Gurgeh #21 5 years ago

    Lol blu-ray. "Sales of Blu-ray discs have reached one million in less than a year" trumpets the Blu-Ray disc association. So far there have been 1.2 million Blu-ray discs sold versus 937,000 HDDVDs.

    Last month Happy Feet sold on over 4 million DVDs in *one* week. So the winner of the formats so far is... the consumer.

  • JediMasterMalik #22 5 years ago

    I want planes damn it!

  • monkie_king #23 5 years ago

    what the hell is he talking about with the new-looking car's struts and shocks? does he think suspension has only been invented since GTA3 was released?

  • RMXtreme #24 5 years ago

    I was hoping they expanded the property development options, but this doesn't seem to be the case.

  • penhalion #25 5 years ago

    What is it going to be? another of those police helicopters or media choppers flying about. Odds are the player can't even use them!

  • YourMessageHere #26 5 years ago

    Somebody explain, please, what I would possibly want to climb a telephone pole for. And unless there's now some tangible purpose to girlfriends in the game, they can sod off with that too. More importantly, have they managed to work out that their mission design and inventory philosophies are utter wank yet? And even more importantly, have they done anything about it?

  • smelly #27 5 years ago

    Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

    Helicopters/airplanes were the worst bit of prev gta's.

  • smelly #28 5 years ago

    "With the size of Blu-Ray they could PACk the PS3 version with all manner of extras - simple everyday things that would make the game seem "alive""


    That's not how games work.

  • Madder-Max #29 5 years ago

    I wonder if Rockstar has buckled under stakeholder pressure or used focus groups feedback. Hope not. Hopefully they have listenned to their user base.

  • agparrot #30 5 years ago

    I'm undecided about all this "It's not about property development, it's about survival" ponce. I really enjoyed the property elements of VC and thought they were a step in the right direction.

    The presence in VC and in SA of plots of land that had clearly been earmarked for further development hinted that maybe somewhere under the GTA hood they were tinkering with a turbo property ownership mechanic. The idea that my CJ wasn't like anybody else's CJ in SA was an interesting one, and I remember the assertion from R* that the same could be said of the environment, which, in the end, wasn't so true.

    Enough missions in previous GTAs have centred around construction sites, Site foremen and, in SA, the formation and management of gangs that perhaps those sites where 'First Build' or whatever it was was written could finally be replaced by user-selected buildings... especially in t3h n3xt g3n where this kind of thing could be downloadable - even if it is only as skins and does not have a functional effect on the game.

    I'm seriously hoping that as GTA1 had user-generated, downloadable cars and stuff, that we can see a move back to this, maybe with a vehicle-creation tool, for GTAIV. Sure, we aren't all going to be able to program-a-saab-convertible or whatever, but there *are* some clever people in the mod communities of many games, why not put their talents to use here, outside the PC arena?

  • zuljin #31 5 years ago

    @smelly
    "That's not how games work."

    Really depends on the game and scenario though. Say for example you had animations and characters which streamed off disk. Every single character in this world could say do a different dance and would look different. A bit like how DVDs were a requirement to do streaming environments as seen in GTA, because the whole scene would be too big in memory.

    That'd be a whole lotta work for an incremental improvement in "realism" tho.

  • immateriaux #32 5 years ago

    Always considered Grand Theft Auto to be about Autos; planes, helicopters just candy really and not very good candy: Chewits comes to mind for some reason ...

  • smelly #33 5 years ago

    character animation streaming off disc? Lmfao.

  • Stultorum #34 5 years ago

    @zuljin

    That would actually be pretty groovy. AI characters having a bigger repertoire of movements and behavior patterns would be ideal. One could argue that this is were the next gen really is: Physics and AI. The next best thing would of course be a mmorpg gta style where people could play for free, or, alternatively pay to rent an appartment (fee according to appartment size), buy exclusive cars (and have them stolen). Now -that- I would upgrade my lowly pc for: a mmorpg set in a real world city instead of fairyland!
    Edited by Stultorum at 24/04/07 @ 19:15

  • gaselite #35 5 years ago

    "And while Reiner only got to see the game for 15 minutes, it was enough to convince him of its quality - and showcase some neat new features, like a new method of car-jacking. "From what I was shown, the only new element was breaking the window of the car to get in. The animation for this was awesome, and something I wish I had seen more than once," he revealed."

    Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone. Best game ever? I think so.

  • smelly #36 5 years ago

    @zuljin:

    A character animation rarely uses up much more than say 10k maximum. You could have billions upon billions (* not really) of character animations in a game and not even fill a cd.

    But then you'd have to pay artists to generate all of those billions of animations.. so wont happen.

    None of that would make a bigger disc necessary though.



  • zuljin #37 5 years ago

    @smelly
    "A character animation rarely uses up much more than say 10k maximum. You could have billions upon billions (* not really) of character animations in a game and not even fill a cd."

    True. Animation probably was silly example. Like in the recent Spiderman talks though, the main character has 200k animations. Then start to include facial animations for various creatures, and it does all add up.

    I think a better example would be characters. Again taking the Spiderman example, the characters in 2 looked crap. No doubt about it. A specific (unique) head can easily take up a meg on PSP, but more often closer to 2 or 3. So say 10 megs per person for a "next-gen" game? You could potentially hit a gig purely on faces with small variations. I think even 10 meg would be an understatement, what about dynamic hair, etc, etc. Like I said, it all adds up, and space is something less a dev has to worry about.

    "None of that would make a bigger disc necessary though."
    Well again, this is open to interpretation. Necessary, for that measly added realism, no. But once certain things become standard, people will miss them or get annoyed if they're not there. eg, I was annoyed Stalker had limited areas. I personally think the bigger disk is necessary, eventually. But is Blu-Ray and HD-DVD here too soon and too expensive? Quite possibly.

  • MrBiggles #38 5 years ago

    Best on 360 as usual.

  • SomaticSense #39 5 years ago

    @Madder Max

    "I wonder if Rockstar has buckled under stakeholder pressure or used focus groups feedback. Hope not. Hopefully they have listenned to their user base. "

    I really hope they haven't listened to their user base this time. They have for last couple, and it lead to the inclusion of some of the worst ideas implemented into the series, ideas that just didn't add to the gameplay at all.

    Things that come to mind are; jetpacks, exercising, fast food shops, graffiti, girlfriends, countryside, and................ planes (before anyone complains, admit it, they didn't work anywhere near as well as the cars and bikes gameplay-wise, and certainly won't work in a New York-type city with huge skyscrapers blocking your airspace). All were put in at the expense of creating an intricately well designed environment, and ended up making the game soulless.

    Fair enough, there were a couple of user ideas that did work (namely bicycles and gambling), but the GTA community's bad ideas far outweighed their good ones. So please let's not have Rockstar go to their (admit it, majority chav/gangstas/14 yr old boys) user base for ideas this time, eh?
    Edited by SomaticSense at 24/04/07 @ 22:45

  • smelly #40 5 years ago

    >efore anyone complains, admit it,

    no complaints from me.. the planes/choppers were SHIT in previous games.

  • ShiroBen #41 5 years ago

    Just as long as they keep the bicycles in, I'll be happy.

  • aine #42 5 years ago

    pfft. I loved San Andreas's hugeness. The countryside was brilliant to just piss around in (as long as you didn't fall into the water).

    As for planes, it was a good idea, but the controls were shite and I think Rockstar knew they were shite. But apparently they couldn't be arsed improving them, so they just took the planes out entirely. Great.

  • smelly #43 5 years ago

    >pfft. I loved San Andreas's hugeness

    REALLY??? Personally i fail to see the fun in a big world.. i'd rather have a smaller self contained world personally.

    As my ex used to say.. bigger doesnt always mean better.

  • YourMessageHere #44 5 years ago

    Me too, I'd rather a bigger world than a smaller one generally, and with all the GTA games and their rivals, a big draw has always been simply exploring the world. I'm playing Test Drive Unlimited presently, and the shite car handling has annoyed the hell out of me but I'm continuing because I like the ability to explore the entire island. SA had more world, so the fun of exploring it continued longer.

    Having said that, if Rockstar actually make good on what they seem to be saying and make Liberty City in greater detail, that in itself could provide the added room to explore.