Gta iv casino

Spoiler Warning: Plot details, ending details, or both are in the text which follows.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details, ending details, or both are in the text which follows.

Grand Theft Auto IV (also known as GTA IV or GTA 4) is the eleventh title in the Grand Theft Auto series and the first game in the HD Universe of the series.

The game was developed by Rockstar North and was published and released by Rockstar Games for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Originally intended for a fourth-quarter 2007 release, the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions were released worldwide to widespread hype on April 29, 2008. GTA IV has subsequently been awarded the Gaming World Record of the Most Successful Entertainment Launch of All Time, and has received numerous other awards and accolades. The PC version was released on December 3, 2008. GTA IV and Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City were released for Xbox One via backwards compatibility on February 9, 2017.

Theme

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Notes: Needs rewording in some areas.

The very first dialogue by Niko in the very first trailer for the game sets up the first notable immigrant protagonist, Niko Bellic, to enter the United States of America and make more critical analysis of American culture than previous main characters have done. Grand Theft Auto IV's deeper meaning circulates around Niko's own philosophy, and his clear, blunt critiques of American culture and life in general make the deeper ideas much easier to see and understand. Niko is normally shown to be in the right, but is also proven to be overly cynical, leaving interpretation open to the viewer. The game and its very complex plot deals with several themes:

As read on the packaging of the game, Rockstar Games asks "what does the American dream mean today?". Niko is cynical about America, saying "capitalism is a dirty business" and only people who are extremely greedy and/or born into wealth have any opportunity. Mikhail Faustin also laments before he dies that "America made him (Dimitri Rascalov) greedy! ...This American greed takes everyone! It is like a disease!". Niko mocks American stereotypes like "strip malls and clinical obesity" (as do the makers of the game by parodying concepts like post-9/11 hysteria and celebrity obsession). On the plus side, Roman Bellic, as well as other characters (Brucie Kibbutz, Bernie Crane, Ivan Bytchkov, and Hossan Ramzy among others) are optimistic about America and life in general, tend to do very well for themselves financially, and try in vain to encourage Niko to be more optimistic.

The American Dream is also shown not to be promised to anyone, not even when they already live in America. Social circles all the way from Playboy X and Elizabeta Torres to Patrick McReary all have trouble making and responsibly saving money, not restricting it to any one nationality. Early on, The Beat 102.7 explains that their listeners "don't know how to manage their money yet!". Gerry McReary describes his family's spending habits as "Never any fucking focus! Never! ...Oh yeah, wine and women as quick as possible, and remain a slave forever". Packie eventually says after a mission "Well, Niko, that was a whole lot of effort for no fucking reward. Story of my life." to which Niko replies "It is the story of a lot of lives, Packie. I'm getting used to hearing it".

Grand Theft Auto IV has an extremely complex plot with a very long list of characters. It is also the first game in the HD Universe that allows the player to change the plot by making choices, which all have consequences. This creates an atmosphere where Niko is haunted and shadowed by his past actions wherever he goes. He tells Roman: "There is no such thing as a new beginning, Roman. With every day we live, we pick up new baggage, baggage we must carry with us for the rest of our lives. There's no dropping it and pretending we are fresh and clean, just because we get off a boat in a new place." Prime examples include his numerous encounters with Ray Bulgarin, most of the random characters, and working alongside Johnny Klebitz or Patrick McReary while he had, either by not having met them yet or circumstances beyond his control, killed someone close to them. In the finale, Niko feels the coffin of Kate or Roman, depending on the player's choice, on his conscience because of his criminal lifestyle, saying they "never should have gotten close to me". He is deeply depressed about being trapped in the criminal lifestyle (by a need of income), telling Kate McReary and others that he wishes he could leave it behind, but often adds that he knows he can't.

Main Characters:

• Niko Bellic: The playable protagonist, through whose eyes the player sees the world of the game. He is morally upstanding and logical despite his criminal life, but is often shown to have authority issues. He is also more cynical and pessimistic than is good for him. He seems to sort people into three categories:

• Roman Bellic, Mallorie Bardas, Little Jacob, Brucie Kibbutz, Kate McReary, and Bernie Crane: The optimists, people Niko likes because of their positivity, and they all try in vain to encourage Niko to be more optimistic. Many are foolish and could be mistaken for comic relief, but they do offer pearls of wisdom about life and success, a realization that Niko must make at the same time. Other interesting cases are Ivan Bytchkov, and Hossan Ramzy, both recent immigrants like Niko but with much more confidence in the American way of life.

• Patrick McReary, Gerald McReary, Derrick McReary, Dwayne Forge, Phil Bell and Jon Gravelli: The pessimists, people Niko likes because they have angst that he instinctively responds to. Packie and Dwayne especially become friends of Niko because of their shared struggle; Niko confides in Dwayne remarkably early in their relationship and tells him "you remind me of me". It's also notable that he relates well to Jon Gravelli and his bleak sense of humor, despite an enormous age gap, other lifestyle differences and Niko's traditional dislike of his bosses.

• Vladimir Glebov, Dimitri Rascalov, Mikhail Faustin, Ray Bulgarin, Francis McReary, United Liberty Paper Contact, Manny Escuela, Elizabeta Torres, Playboy X, Ray Boccino, Darko Brevic and Jimmy Pegorino: The corrupt, people Niko doesn't like (and/or forced to take orders from) because of their greed or immorality. He had to take orders from all of them, considers killing most of them at least once, and inevitably kills about half of them himself. This, combined with his dislike of capitalism, shows that Niko has authority issues and can't stand corrupt people in power. With the exception of United Liberty Paper and Elizabeta, and only if spared Darko, Playboy and Francis McReary, all of the corrupt end up dead.

• Michelle, Kate McReary, Carmen Ortiz, Kiki Jenkins and Alex Chilton; girlfriends Niko can date. Michelle and Kate are unlocked in the story mode; the other 3 must be met by the internet. Each girlfriend has their own opinions on what car they would like Niko to drive, what type of clothes he should wear and what type of places they should go to together. The 3 online girlfriends can give Niko a special ability once he pleases them enough in quality and quantity of date.

Voice Cast

Influences

Grand Theft Auto IV is heavily influenced by Russian gangster movies, such as Brother, and its sequel, Brother 2, and Niko Bellic's physical appearance is based on the character of Sasha, a Bulgarian sniper who works as a mercenary for the Bosnian-Serb Srpska paramilitary organization, from the movie Behind Enemy Lines.

Episodes

Two episodes have been released for Grand Theft Auto IV for the Xbox 360, and then released for PlayStation 3 and PC in April 2010. The Lost and Damned was released on February 17, 2009, and features biker Johnny Klebitz as the player character. The Ballad of Gay Tony was been released on October 29, 2009, with Luis Fernando Lopez as the protagonist. It was simultaneously released with the disc version of Episodes from Liberty City, which features both games. These episodes are set in the same city and time as GTA IV, and have many overlapping storylines, characters, and missions. They add new missions, characters, vehicles, weapons, and other gameplay features.

Complete Edition

Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition is the latest release of GTA IV on PC platforms that replaced the original game and its episodes on Steam, released on March 19, 2020 for Steam and Rockstar Games Launcher. The title was revealed by Rockstar Games on February 19th, after a month from GTA IV being removed from Steam on January 18th. Players who owned the previous version of GTA IV or its episodes automatically received GTA IV: Complete Edition with both games.

Rockstar Games reasoning behind pulling the game from Steam was due to Games For Windows Live, which was what was used on the Steam release of GTA IV for DRM and online multiplayer. The Games For Windows Live platform was no longer being supported by Microsoft and therefore wouldn't generate new game keys.

When the Complete Edition was announced, these were the changed stated:

Other announced details:

Timeframe

Although nothing in the game specifically reveals the exact month the events of the game take place, most evidence suggests that it may take place between April and September.

• A number of trees have yellow-brown leaves (though some retain their green colour), hinting at the beginning of the autumn season (September in the Northern Hemisphere).
• Although not a significant indication of the timeline of events, there are a few instances in the game when Niko is idle and the player can see his breath (especially when the weather is overcast or when it's raining). This could either suggest an autumnal setting, or it could be due to the game reflecting the climate of New York City during the very early spring.
• Two calendars in Jimmy Pegorino's house and Luis Lopez's apartment are open on the month of April.

Development

Grand Theft Auto IV was developed by Rockstar North in conjunction with several other Rockstar studios.

Preliminary work on the game began in November 2004, a month after the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.^[2] Rockstar president Sam Houser felt that following up San Andreas was "a nightmare".^[3]Rockstar North, the core 220-person team behind the game, co-opted studios owned by parent company Rockstar Games to facilitate development between a full team of over 1,000,^[4] including 50 employees at Rockstar NYC, 40 at Rockstar Lincoln, 10 at Rockstar San Diego, and around 600–700 working part-time internally and externally.^[5] Some key members of the development team worked 12-hour days during production, often without holidays.^[4] The team decided to continue the numbering scheme absent from the previous two main games to represent the same leap in production as Grand Theft Auto 2 to Grand Theft Auto III.^[2] Development of Grand Theft Auto IV ceased by 21 April 2008 when the game was submitted for manufacturing.^[6] Producer Leslie Benzies estimated that the budget of the development efforts exceeded US$100 million, making Grand Theft Auto IV one of the most expensive video games ever made.^[4]

Research and Open World Design

The game's setting, Liberty City, is based on New York City. The team did not look at the previous renditions of Liberty City as inspiration, wanting it to retain the "general feel" but nothing else.^[7] The map is roughly three times the size of 3D Universe rendition. The developers originally considered using the entire state of New York, before restricting it to Manhattan, and then expanding it out again. They considered including more suburbs with woods, and would regularly vote on which areas to include.^[8] Art director Aaron Garbut said that the team chose the setting because of the detail and variety it provided, describing New York as "an amazing, diverse, vibrant, cinematic city".^[9] Writer Dan Houser added that the team "wanted to be somewhere where we had a foothold" due to the amount of research required for the world; Rockstar Games's main headquarters are located in New York.^[10] The team consciously avoided a precise recreation of New York City to allow for more enjoyable game design, selecting the areas that they felt "characterised it the best".^[9] Garbut wanted to capture a caricature of the city as he felt that most people were familiar with "the highlights" from film or literature but did not need to know the areas precisely.^[9] The city was not built with specific missions in mind; the area was created first, and missions implemented later.^[11]

To achieve a realistic environment, 60–70 employees from Rockstar North travelled to New York for research: first at the beginning of the project in March or April 2005 for a week and a half,^[8] and a smaller trip in 2007.^[7] Police officers who previously worked the beat drove the team around Washington Heights.^[8] A full-time research team based in New York handled further requests for information, such as the ethnic minority of a neighbourhood or videos of traffic patterns. Videos shot in New York were played on televisions at the Rockstar North offices "so while they worked they could look up and there was New York".^[8] Benzies claimed that the team took over 100,000 photographs on location in New York,^[4] though Garbut estimates that they took around 250,000.^[7] They also studied architectural plans for apartments, used satellite images to determine city block layout, researched sales figures for models of cars, and read books that detailed the city's infrastructure, including its subways, sewers, and garbage disposal.^[12]

Dan Houser described Liberty City as "the biggest character" of the game.^[9] The Grand Theft Auto IV rendition of Liberty City is more detailed and larger in size than most earlier entries in the series; although smaller than San Andreas, the setting of the previous main game, the developers considered it comparable in scope due to city's verticality, number of buildings, and level of detail.^[13] The team wanted less dead spots and irrelevant spaces, such as the wide open deserts in San Andreas. They wanted the game to be "a more focused experience" than San Andreas, and Dan Houser felt that the limited activities of New York allowed this.^[2] The team felt that the addition of Niko's mobile phone added to the immersion of the world and represented society's shifted focus on phones.^[2] The in-game brands and products are designed over several years; the billboards were implemented in the game around six months prior to release.^[7]

Story and Character Development

The game's script, written by Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries, is about 1,000 pages.^[4] Approximately 660 actors provided voices for the game over 80,000 lines of dialogue.^[8] After conceiving the character and setting, Dan Houser spoke with his brother Sam Houser and Leslie Benzies to bounce story ideas before writing a rough synopsis, a six-paged, detailed document. Once the synopsis was reworked, the designers broke it into missions, represented by a large flow document demonstrating each section. The writers then work on the introductions to the missions; the gameplay dialogue comes much later. Unlike previous Grand Theft Auto games, Grand Theft Auto IV does not have cinematic influences. "We were consciously trying to go, well, if video games are going to develop into the next stage, then the thing isn't to try and do a loving tribute or reference other stuff," said Dan Houser. He said that the writers wanted something "fresh and new and not something that was obviously derived from [a] movie".^[10] Dan Houser felt that the quality of the writing had to improve alongside the advancements in graphics and technology. He noted that the improvements in facial animation allowed for slower-paced cutscenes. The unique dialogue that plays when a mission is retried was to ensure that the gameplay felt "less canned and less like Groundhog Day".^[9]