Okay, you can access the trailer here . It takes bloody ages to buffer on a 2MB connection, but it's worth it.

 

Stream of consciousness post whilst viewing trailer:

 

Liberty City again! Looks like the present. Possibly even the same/similar city layout (maybe they include the suburbs off the islands to make the game bigger?). The lighting is impressive. The movement of the cars is very realistic. Character models impressive, although we're not exactly in Crysis facial-animation territory here. Nice suspension effect on the cars. Ah, the old suspended railway. Up-close, the building textures look amazing.

 

Holy. Moses. :shock:

 

The Statue of Liberty! The Chrysler Building! Grand Central Station! The Stock Exchange! That funny narrow building! They go to New York as well? WTF is going on? Is this part of the game or just a tester to show how awesome they are?

 

Back to Liberty again. Definitely one of the same intersections from GTA3, but the scale is much bigger. The streets are 4 or 6 lanes and the skyscrapers are much taller. The same old Liberty bridges from the look of it. The streets are thronged with people.

 

Ah, narration! Sounds like a foreigner to me. "Life is complicated." No kidding, Sherlock? Ah, you play a Russian with a suspect beard in the game! (not making this up) "I killed people." Sounds promising. Hang on, you play a slave trader? :o Oh, a retired slave trader. Hmm. Looks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Chrysler Building are now in Liberty City. Somehow. Weird.

 

Verdict: looks pretty promising. The graphics are top-notch, although the sheer scale of the game prevents them from being really state-of-the-art for each person in the game. Certainly a vast improvement on the first three games. Confusion over the setting though (it appears I am not alone). The name 'Liberty City' appears in several places (the docks, most notably) and there are recognisable locations from GTA3. However, there are verifiable locations from New York City as well. Some screenshots here.

Loading it now. Keep in mind you watched the HD version, so things always look better as HD =P.

Nah, it was 640x480, not HD.

Isn't Liberty City based off of NY anyways?

 

Edit: This game is only being made for the Xbox 360 and the PS3. No PC game yet. Bleh.

It is, but only in general layout: three areas of the city, although in GTA3 they were three seperate islands as opposed to the Long Island side, Manhattan and the Jersey side. However, this video quite clearly shows the Statue of Liberty, the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building and possibly Time Square as well.

 

On another forum they suggested that the game will actually be based around a whole state and both Liberty City and New York City will be in it, but that doesn't sound very likely either. Maybe they just renamed New York as Libert City in the game? Seems odd.

A PC version is inevitable. Not only because Microsoft are much more closely involved this time, but because VC and SA both sold about 7 million of their 21 million-odd sales on PC (i.e. about a third). That's a serious amount of cash.

 

However, whilst previous PC versions of GTA only appeared 6 months after the PS2 version, I'd expect the gap this time to be longer. Hopefully only a year at most.