The Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series has come a long way from its somewhat humble beginnings. The first three GTAs were largely overlooked by most because of their top-down approach to the visuals. While they may have had interesting mission structure and some brief glimpses of future greatness, they were not as successful as they could have been.
GTA III made the leap from the limited top-down world of the previous titles to the more varied and realized open-world 3D sandbox that has now almost become a standard in many video games. GTA III not only created a new genre of gaming, it also succeeded in being one of the most innovative, recognizable, and copied games of all time. While companies will always quickly scramble to copy amazing ideas, Rockstar continues to change the game to stay ahead of their competitors.
As much as Rockstar changed gaming when it took the GTA series from a top-down perspective to a 3D open world, GTA IV looks like it may have a similarly amazing impact. Unlike Vice City and San Andreas, GTA IV seems less like a sequel and more like a refined reimagining of the GTA series as a whole. Instead of giving players increasingly more land and cities to explore, GTA IV instead focuses on just one city, Liberty City (2.0). While Liberty City may have already made an appearance in GTA III, it has been completely redesigned and more realized. Instead of just a mass of buildings that you must steer around while traveling from destination to destination, most buildings will either allow entry or vertical scaling. Opening the GTA world to vertical exploration has the potential to change almost any mission that you are given. Descending on an unsuspecting pimp or sniping a guard from a nearby rooftop are now options that were not previously possible.
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