Mmkay, these screens have an awesome factor of "through the roof."

April 29th, where art thou?

In a word....bitchin!! The multiplayer aspect looks set to dwarf even the main game!

I was so skeptical of this game, I even have thought that I would just pass on it because the last few have been sort of repetitive.

With the recent screenshots coming out, I have completely changed my mind.

Definitely real. A ton of multiplayer details should trickle out tomorrow from several major sources.

wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Looks fun. I wonder how deep the multiplayer is gonna be.
I have a feeling that its going to be surprisingly deep.

Downgraded graphics should not be prerequisite. Gears can do it, so can everyone else.

Holy crap! That reminds me, i really need to preorder this soon..

Looks like SA-MP which will hopefully mean it will be just as awesome as SA-MP

The icing on the cake would be split-screen multiplayer as well....I know your including like everything rockstar but you can go a little bit more!

@liquid_kore: Gears has very closed environments this is one huge open environment on the most past.

Looking forward to this. I recently finished GTA:SA and in this age of butchering games and selling them to you piece by piece, it had a shocking amount of content. Great game.

'the requisite - I'm assuming - downgraded graphics for increased online performance.'

That sucks. Shouldn't be a problem for the PC version though, thankfully. I'll wait for that.

@Noks415: But if you're right, then it won't be a surprise :o

@liquid_kore: Gears had 8 people online.

My god, I was starting to lose interest in this game.

But, the potential of Cops Vs. Robbers?

"April 29th, where art thou?" Indeed.

Can't wait. Hopefully we have a shitty spring so I don't feel guilty staying inside all May.

I was sold the first day they announced the game.
These screens mean nothing more to me, they're like torture devices made to destroy my patience.

@liquid_kore:
Gears is a corridor shooter and this is open sandbox...

@ErskinPig: Why does it suck? It's common, and I just said that to stop people bitching about the poor textures in some of those MP shots. In a game-world this big, youd be MAD to not expect the graphics to be toned down to accomodate MP.

@Luke Plunkett: It sucks that it has to happen.

i'm confused, is there no HUD or is it just off for these shots? I need my stars in the top right corner or it just ain't GTA. I've really been wanting to see some gameplay shots (or even video!) but if these are them, then I wonder if some of the shots we've been seeing all along were gameplay too.

@Crome: @Garo: @slomo788:

There are no textures, models or sprites being sent online. The size should make no difference because everything is stored locally and rendered locally. The only thing being sent is pure code which should not affect the rendering engine at all.

Wow. Looks...crappy. I mean, I can understand downgrading graphics, but hell, that looks like San Andreas.

Oh well, I won't be playing this game online in any case. Couldn't stand the underage kids screaming in my ear :P

The game looks pretty decent in singleplayer though, so it's all good I suppose.

@liquid_kore: Yes Mr. Genius, and it's so easy that all the games that you developed are perfect online and offline. All the other developers are just a bunch of idiots for not being able to figure out something so simple. Right?

Could be a hoax. April 1st is still on the horizon.

@liquid_kore: How about the fact that they have their own art direction, that happens to be different from Gears? Personally, Gears had incredible detail, but the overall look was not very interesting to me. Technically great, but "meh" in terms of atmosphere.

Fanboys... go nuts!

Is it strange that I have never once been excited over this game and have never once thought it looked all that great? I'm not saying that the game will be bad or anything but with SA I was excited, this, not so much. And I constantly hear people say how great the game looks and even the single player screens don't look all that impressive to me. And yes I understand this is an enormous game don't give me that excuse.

Jesus the 29th can't get here fast enough. Now for the hard question - 360 or PS3?

@Candlejack: Your such a graphics gigolo.

@SynKade:
To each their own. I'm not gonna flame you like the Nintendo fanboys flamed me when I let my complete lack of enthusiasm for SSBB be known, I'm just gonna say give it a rent or something because there are a lot of reasons to be excited for this game if it follows through on its promises. You don't HAVE to be obsessed with everything that's popular like some would have you believe. More power to you.

@liquid_kore: I think what you're seeing is one of the tradeoffs when it comes to games that stream the game environment and trackables in realtime. you are right that traditionally graphics side performance shouldn't be affected by bandwith and players, but GTAIV may be a special case. The reason? because of the way in which the game renders the world, objects, and tracks how you've interacted with them. This is usually contained to a single player perspective. But if you have to track 16 players, you'd have to tighten the max individual resources being streamed so things don't choke. An easy way around it would be to limit your sightlines, or take out pedestrians and ambient traffic... they're supposedly making that optional, but they are throwing in a "go anywhere, do anything" mode.

holy shit holy shit holy shit OMGOMGOMG.

seriously, this is THE most cool thing i have seen

@v00deux: I've been wondering the exact same thing. I've heard people talk about the map HUD having the health and armor bars wrapping around it but I've yet to see any photos.

@scotty: I agree with this. Why can't April just pass in the blink of an eye?!

@SynKade: What do you mean? That is a completely legitimate excuse. The GTA series was never known for it graphics. All three last gen games all basically look the same. The series is so popular because the gameplay and story/humor. It doesn't take itself too seriously like other games.

I'll admit that it is not the best looking game coming out this year, but it has style and that is what really matters.

Oh man.. I can't friggin wait. Stupid lousy tax season keeping me from preordering this yet havingtopayUncleScam allthat moneies.

@liquid_kore:
ALL moving objects have to be synchronized and if the city is used and handled like in the single player mode this IS a problem for the multiplayer part!
Again Gears is a corridor shooter and the maps are nowhere near the size of a GTA :/

but will there be friendcodes?

...lmao.

@Luke Plunkett: I agree. The astonishing thing is, it looks like its still got most/all of the geometry intact, the models still look really nice, just not as well textured/lit/etc, and obviously the bullet and particle effects are toned down. Still, they look even better to my eye than I first feared upon reading your relatively cautious post ;)

What I'll be fascinated to see is how MP is implemented, if its like 2 player in GTA:SA where you just go to a map location to trigger it, or if it will basically be a whole separate menu option. I'd prefer the former, one of the things I've always liked about GTA was its push to eliminate typical menus/setting screens in favor of just doing things in game, I hope this game pushes that much, much farther. Also would make it so you unlock different types/levels of MP as you progress through singleplayer....damn I can't wait until the end of next month!

@ErskinPig: We get it. You hate consoles. You love the PC. You hate DLC that costs money. You love the DLC on the PC.

* I can't wait for the next Kotaku story that mentions DLC, so that I can hear once again how ErskinPig feels about it!

@Sandbox_Emperor: You'll start with all players labeled by 64-digit friend codes, until you kill a small man hiding in your closet who looks vaguely like an Iwata Mii 2 minutes into the first match by strangling him to death with a lamp cord, at which point you'll get your first MP achievement unlocked along with the ability to see Gamertags/PSN IDs on your opponents.

Would that be pleasing? ;)

@ErskinPig: I don't think you understand sandbox games, they tend to look worse then the average game cause they have a HUGE open world.

also is there anything you don't ever hate on, or do you just have a permanent stick inside of you ass?

It doesn't look incredible. But it looks way better compared to to other current games than any of the gta3 games did. The textures kinda suck in these shots, but the entirety of gta3 looked like total ass.

@v00deux: I agree with the confusion. Will I have to lean against a wall to heal?

The screen capture where they are shooting at the helicopter and there is a red light in the corner kind of reminds me of Team Fortress graphics. It looks a little cartoony, but that might not be a bad thing. I may be changing my mind, though, and might get this game when it comes out instead of waiting until after I'm done with MGS4.

@DaiMacculate: Oh man, I couldn't help but laugh when I read that. Genius.

@skrame gives himself a star ☆:
@kommanderk:

wtf? OK, you can both back the fuck off. My comment was completely innocuous. Do you work for Microsoft or something? Sorry fellas, but I'll keep standing up for common sense even if it harms your business.

Never really cared for GTA but these screen shots look freaking sweet. I might have to get this.

Preordered today.

Can't wait. This game will consume me for more than a couple months.

Hooooooooooooooooooooly shit.

PSN- InsidiousTuna

I'll be the one with the sniper rifle.

@DaiMacculate: I'm thinking seamless, and it just triggers an automatic downgrading of textures and draw distance according to lag and the number of players. Who knows, they might even pull off a Burnout-style integrated MP, where if you're "open" people can just send a request and jump right in.

I think it's real.

yeah, these are pretty legit to me. :)

@liquid_kore:
My guess is its an overhead issue. Gears loads the entire map at once, when it doesn't do that, its able to figure out where you're going and preload the textures.
In a sandbox like this (assuming the mulitplayer is the same same full size area as the single player. *I don't follow GTA, never been a fan so I don't know), there are many places where a character *could* go, it makes preloading textures harder. Trying to load those textures as full res may put more load then is needed and cause suttering when dealing with a net connection.

The point I'm getting at is that, its never a simple as it seems to get complicated things like a networked game running. There are always tradeoffs of visuals vs performance. The more Performace the less visuals and likewise.

I work with computers for a living, they can be a tricky beast.

@wild_world_girl: You're right about art direction, but I don't think thats what he was getting at. More the point that the graphics suffered because of the multiplayer.

But yes, it always bugs me when people say X is better then Y because of how it looks when the two really don't even apply to each other. Halo 3 Vs Gears for example. Two different art directions, even if both were *somewhat* grounded in reality.

I can't WAIT to play this.

If a garbage truck lands on top of you, that's probably me.

If they don't announce GTA IV for the PC i am giving up video games forever.

I'm not even joking.

Looks awesome, to bad we've to wait another month until we get our hands on it. :(

@K-Squad! (Badass Edition): They will, don't worry. Tis inevitable. Probably have to wait 6 months or a year, but it'll happen.

I can say with absolute confidence -- lest Zeus himself strike me down -- that the images are completely legitimate. On an unrelated note, we're GTA4.NET, not GTAIV.net. :P