[Infernal Mass]

So many new gameplay elements are being installed that it just makes sense that Rockstar is promising that the missions will be both more numerous and far more diverse than ever before. There will be at least 100 mission this time (up from GTA3's 74) and possibly as many as 140. "We keep cramming them in" says Dan Houser, Rockstar's VP of creativity. Moreover, the missions seem to be longer and more sophisticated with highend production values, houser uses GTA3's Bomb Da base mission as an example, because it was one of the last missions installed in the game and was designed after the various development tools and game systems were up and running at full capacity. For those who preferred the extra assignments like the Ambulance (side note: Who in the hell actually enjoyed the Ambulance missions?) and Toyz in the Hood missions, don't worry, there will be more side missons and hidden secrets to find than ever before.

Misson complexity will also benefit from a greatly increased emphasis on storyline and plot development. VC is a production whose scale would send most Hollywood producers running home for mommy. Video games are now at a point where they are capable of doing things in terms of size, scale and involvement that are way beyond what movies are doing," explains Houser. "The average Hollywood script is about 200 pages. Ours would be about 2000." He's not exaggerating. GTA3 had about 3000 pedestrian comments alone. Roughly an hour and a half worth of dialogue. VC looks to clock in between 8000 and 9000 lines of pedestrian dialogue. It will also boast greater character and plot development with around 80 minutes worth of cut-scenes (GTA3 had roughly 30 min) to help push the story along. It might have even been more, had Rockstar North not worked very hard to integrate plot development into the missions themselves, not just before and after each one.

One of the most notable side effects of this greater emphasis on story-telling is that the main character actually has a name and a personality. He's Tommy Vercetti, a low level mobster voice-acted by veteran Ray Liotta, an expert in bringing intense psychotic characters to life. Tommy has been jailed for 15 years after a drug deal he was involved in went bad. He no sooner gets out thanthe "friend" for whom he did the job calls wanting reparations for all the money he lost. Time to go back to work.

Rockstar is keeping the storyline under wraps, but promises and open-ended plot that "Takes player from being screwed up to getting more screwed to finally figuring out what's going on; oddly the Rockstar rep we talked to referred to Tommy as the "first" character leading us to believe there are additional characters (Rockstar would neither confirm nor deny the possibility). Either way, Tommy seems well prepared to take on whatever Vice City has to offer.

Whether underaged gamers can handle it might be another story. One of the thigns that made GTA3 unique was its notoriously mature content. Will Vice City cross the line even further?

"Possibly," says Rockstar's CEO Terry Donovan, "but only if it fits the plot." He likens GTA3 to the first Friday the 13th movie, which blew away people with its gory intensity and points out how that four movies later when the human element and story had been discarded in favor of increasing levels of blood and guts the series became worthless. Granted VC's storyline probably won't read like an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine, but don't expect the game to push the envelope just for the sake of being extreme.

With so much time and effort devoted to generating new game content one might expect tech specs to have changed very little from last year's offering. Incredibly that's not the case. Rockstar North has somehow found time to completely dismantle and rebuild the entire game engine, with impressive results."

VC’s image quality is much sharper and clearer than in GTA3 and everything uses alot more polygoms. Also there's greater texture detail (the team learned to stream textures very late in GTA3's development) and new radiosity lighting system helps the neon light spill smoothly over everything. The environment seems more alive, from fish and waves in the bay to the way the sunlight glints off cars windshields as it drives by. There's even a cloth model that makes Tommy's jacket ripple in the wind when he rides a motorcycle.

It's a smarter world too, with NPCs who are far more intelligent than before. For example, pathfinding is greatly improved so gangs will walk in clusters now rather than in a parade like straight line. And for players who abused the way NPCs in GTA3 couldnt shoot over cars get ready to learn some new moves. Not only will they now fire away but they also might crouch behind a car themselves to present a smaller target.

The final important element of GTA3 was the wide selection of satirical (yet still remarkably legitimate sounding) radio stations that populated the airwaves. This is yet another area where Rockstar is blowing away it previous standard. GTA3 had around 3 hours of music and talk radio. VC will boast a staggering nine to ten hours, and believe it or not, it's all licensed music from the 80's. This adds a great authentic feel to the action (though we hope GTA3's commercials and talk radio stations will remain) and really helps establish the time frame in which the game will be taking place.

There is also some damn good music here, incuding tracks from A Flock of Seagulls, Michael Jackson, and Judas Priest. In fact the sound track will be relieased by a major record lable (most likely as a box set) though which one has accepted the task has yet to be revealed at press."

Ultimately the most impressive thing about GTA:VC is how enthusiastically ambitious it is. Rockstar actually looked at the most successful videogame of 2001 and decided to do it all over again with twice as much of everything. It helps that the team clearly loves its creation "I think GTA:VC is going to be the best video game of all time. I really believe that" offers Houser with humble conviction. Strong words but come October 22nd we guarantee that a good chunk of the millions of diehard GTA3 players out there will be saying the same thing."