GTA IV will have 16 player multiplayer

[marcode]

Gaming Excellence has managed to get some very interesting information pertaining to GTA IV at the PlayStation Holiday Preview Event held in Toronto recently. While GTA IV wasn't being covered at the event, Rockstar was in attendance to show off Manhunt 2.

Now GTA IV being GTA IV, this meant that the topic eventually came up and many of the usual questions were asked, BUT Rockstar had some notable items to divulge.

Firstly, the developers have been busy testing various plots and have even considered having the entire world unlocked for the player at the start of the game. GTA veterans will know that one of the staples of previous GTA games has been locked areas that can only be accessed by progressing past certain missions or pivotal story elements.

Some fans enjoyed this system, as it gave them incentive to move through the story and continue playing the game, while other fans found the system somewhat limiting and unecessary.

Secondly, and more importantly, Rockstar is aiming for a multiplayer component to compliment the singleplayer, with up to 16 players fighting it out in various multiplayer modes.

Of course, for PC users, this won't be such a ground breaking and new experience because modifications opened the door to multiplayer Grand Theft Auto III soon after its release for PCs. For console users however, the Grand Theft Auto series has been a strictly offline affair, so the possibility of multiplayer is a huge plus and will no doubt make up for the delays in the release of GTA IV.

GTA IV is slated for release in Q1-Q2 2008 on PS3 and Xbox 360.

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[EvilBoB]

Cool. It's about time they tried this out - just hope they playtest it enough first as it could be a fairly boring affair if it's just run around, shoot stuff, run over stuff etc.

Not sure the game lends itself well to deathmatches

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multi theft auto for vice city was great.. dont see why it cant work very well.

[liveseytowers]

Multiplayer death match would be ace, with extra points for raping one of the other players

[EvilBoB]

Back when I tried it I think it was the mod on GTA3. It was ok but nothing special back then - The one player will be the bomb this time I wasn't looking forward to GTAIV that much until recently and the more I read about it the more I think it will be fun.

I'm glad there's a break before it's released though. Was worried when I saw Halo 3, PGR and GTA would all be out roughly the same time.

[DJAd]

Was worried when I saw Halo 3, PGR and GTA would all be out roughly the same time.

Really? I almost came.

I hope its more like 16 players a team or something, if they have it similar to multi theft auto, 16 players on a massive map is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack.