Chris

Cheers. Speed reading stuff ... bound to have a couple of minor mistakes. IGN's article was terrible anyway, their standards are seriously slipping. They barely revealed anything about the game, compared to say CVG who posted tonnes of details, in fact it's where most of our summary is taken from.

Today's previews and screenshots have now started to surface. You can see all the new shots by scrolling to the bottom of this post, and below that are links to all the articles our summary of new information is sourced from (mainly CVG). Summary of new information in today's previews Features / Gameplay Car modding makes a return! Pay 'n' Spray's now double up as mod shops and offer the ability to swap out license plates, as well as provide performance upgrades and cosmetic options such as new spoilers, grilles, and window tints. Suspension and brake upgrades can also be carried out. Weapons can be customised with laser sights, scopes, silencers, and high capacity magazines. Property purchasing makes a return from Vice City - houses, garages and businesses can all be purchased as additional sources of revenue. Different characters will purchase different types of business. Player customisation includes haircuts, tattoos and of course clothes The in-game phone, iFruit, can be used to take pictures and upload them to Social Club or your own social media page. The iFruit is a smartphone and even has its own apps: internet, contacts, social media, calendar, and a replay missions app. There are three more Rockstar hasn't yet detailed. Activities you can do include stunt jumps, flying challenges, yoga, golf, tennis and bike races. You can also pick up hitch-hikers. Side-missions also make a return. One example is where Michael must escort a starlet away from the paparazzi and back to her home in the hills. It is possible to rob ATMs and liquor stores, presumably in a way similar to Vice City. You can hunt the wildlife if you want to Combat You can combat roll in and out of cover. There is also a "combat jog". You have a better view of oncoming targets thanks to a wider, Gears of War-styled field of vision You can run and gun fluidly while retaining control of the aiming reticule The reticule changes from white to red when targeted at an enemy, and flashes an X when the enemy is dead Map / Environment Rockstar say the land mass in GTAV is three and a half times the size of Red Dead Redemption, with the total play area becoming five times as big once you factor in the ocean Wildlife spotted included deer and mountain lions Fully explorable ocean includes "circling sharks, deep underwater ridges, schools of fish, a barnacle-encrusted wreck and shafts of sunlight shimmering through the water" You can even dive for treasure (NPCs will do this too) but there are no waypoints, you'll have to explore yourself The ocean has amazing wave physics, especially noticeable when boats speed past you Some boats will include gear such as wetsuit, flippers and tanks for diving The population of GTAV will be 5 times that of GTA IV The geographic span of the map is massive. It contains mountains, rivers, lakes, military bases, farmland, desert, dense urban environments and more. The game has a "crazy level of detail": You can board buses for a tour of celebrity homes, there are humourous film posters are on walls, men in costumes will accost you outside the Cathay Theatre, one character was Impotent Rage (like a "crappy version of Superman") and Space Ranger. Characters and Skills Each character has a unique set of attributes: Stamina, Shooting, Strength, Stealth, Flying, Driving, Mechanic, Lung Capacity In addition to the above, each character has a "Special". Special meters drain after use, and recharge slowly in the aftermath Franklin: adrenalin junkie and can slow down time while driving Michael: his own version of bullet time Trevor: frenzy mode, where he's does double damage, takes half damage, and has a unique melee attack The stealth skill suggests that you can use a stealth based approach to heists to draw minimal attention and perhaps walk away with a larger reward The character selection wheel is split into four triangles: Franklin, Trevor, Michael, and your own multiplayer avtaar Each character moves in a slightly different way, reflecting their different builds and styles Google Earth style transitions between characters are very stylish. The screen fills with static and the camera suddenly moves from your character, to above him, to very high above him, and then in reverse to the character you are transitioning to. It is quicker if the player you are switching to is nearer. Character switching can be done during cutscenes, manually, or automatically when AI takes control for you. Although you can choose to switch when you want, in-game dialogue will suggest moments when it would be a good time to switch. The relationship between single and multiplayer is much closer. You can quickly drop in and out of multipayer simply by pressing Down on the D-pad - Rockstar said more will be revealed on multiplayer in the future Trevor has an ongoing feud with The Lost. Mission Details Michael has an obsession with classic films and comes up with heists based on them, which are in turn based on real world movies. The demo showed a mission entitled 'Blitz Play' - Michael organises a heist similar to the one he's seen in the GTA version of real life film Heat. Mini heists are used as preparation. Players must secure vehicles, outfits, masks, getaway vehicles, and even a crew. Locations will also be needed for dumping evidence. These smaller heists build up to a bigger heist. They'll require the right crew and players will have to decide between cheaping out and getting less skilled people, or paying more for highly skilled crew members that could result in a larger cut in the end. Crew members, who include gunmen, wheelmen, technician etc. who survive the heist will continue through to the next one and receive a skill boost Each of the three characters has their own job to do, it's up to you how much you want to do with each one. If you die the game reloads to the last checkpoint, even if the other two characters are still alive If you have an hour to kill, we recommend checking out CVG's preview on YouTube, it's basically more or less the same information that we've summarised here, but in greater detail. Press play and leave it running in the background. New Screenshots New Artwork The following publications have written previews of what they saw in the demo Rockstar showed them in the last few days: CVG article and Destructoid EDGE GameInformer - 1, 2, 3 and 4 GameSpot IGN UK and second article Kotaku OPM OXM video preview The Telegraph USA Today VideoGamer Many non-English publications also have reviews, below is a comprehensive listing of them sorted by language. France: Gameblog.fr | Jeuxvideomagazine.com | Jeuxvideo.com | Jeuxactu.com Germany: Bild.de | Gamona.de | Eurogamer.de | Gameswelt.de | Gamepro.de | Gamestar.de | Onlinewelten.com | Areagames.de | Looki.de | Computerbildspiele.de | Games Aktuell | VideoGamesZone | GameZone | Gamereactor.de Spain: 3DJuegos | Meristation | LaPS3 | HobbyConsolas | Vandal | IGN Benelux: Insidegamer | Power Unlimited | 9lives | Gamer.nl | Gamekings | Tweakers | IGN Italy: Spaziogames.it | Eurogamer.it | Gamesvillage.it | Multiplayer.it | Everyeye.it | IGN Scandinavia: Spill.no | Gamereactor(DK) | Gamereactor(SE) | Gamereactor(NO)

We'll have one up hopefully later tonight. I'll have hundreds of screen grabs uploading a little later on though, which will perhaps make it a lot easier to spot things.

Here they are, three brand new trailers for GTA V. Enjoy! Over 160 screenshots taken from the trailer have been added to our gallery. Some of these are referenced in our summary of what we saw in the trailers below. Analysis Michael Michael's trailer shows how he is trying to maintain his and his family's luxurious lifestyle all while trying to manage his anger issues, which often come out in the form of some explosive scenes. Michael reveals he is "rich and miserable" as he talks to his therapist - something which doesn't appear to be working particularly effectively. Song: Queen - Radio GaGa Breast physics! Something that will surely excite the adolescent fans. We briefly see this with a girl dancing, and later a bikini-clad woman jumping out of the way of oncoming bikes. To be fair to the Rockstar devs, they actually bounce realistically and not in the exaggerated way you may have seen in the Dead of Alive franchise. Michael drives a red Sentinel has a vanity plate that reads "KRYST4L" - interestingly his wife's name is Amanda and daughter is Tracy. Who Krystal is remains a mystery. In the opening scene, the Sentinel has a different plate. We see a Securicar being smashed into by a tow truck which then crashes through a wall. This is most likely a cutscene, nonetheless we're still hopeful for some destructible elements in the environment. Some brands we see are the Vapid car dealership, as well as the Vangelico jewellery store. After the helicopter chase scene we see Michael crashing through a window and taking a hostage - this is likely the mission GameInformer saw in their world exclusive preview. A victim is sniped and his corpse clearly shows an exit wound caused by the bullet. The jet engines of a large aircraft (hopefully pilotable) are powerful enough to blast what appears to be a new model of police car up barrel rolling into the air. Franklin Franklin's trailer shows him to have a completely different lifestyle to Michael's. He doesn't have the riches, but he certainly has the street smarts and knowledge of how to handle guns. Song: Jay Rock feat. Kendrick Lamar - Hood Gone Luv It First off we see a man cleaning a Buffalo which possibly has a slightly customised paint job. This could hint at some car customisation in the game, or may simply be a different model. While Franklin's dog Chop is still the only dog we've had a proper look at (not counting the one on the beach in the first trailer), the man he is talking with (his friend Lamar) can clearly be seen holding a dog lead. We suspect dog ownership will be fairly commonplace. A gangbanger shot in one of the following scenes also shows an exit wound to the side of his back. In a helicopter chase, we get a glimpse of the helicopter cockpit. Cockpit view when driving vehicles is something that fans have been asking for ever since GTA III, whether or not we'll see this in all vehicles remains to be seen. It could just be part of this cutscene, or perhaps only an option when flying large aircraft where the "behind view" is somewhat obstructive due to the aircraft's size. In the police chase this is part of we can definitely see improvements to lighting effects, and in many other scenes too. Butts to gawk at. Weapons attachments - the shotgun Franklin wields in this scene has a tactical light mounted to it - another indication of customisable weapons. Fire animations look a lot better than GTA IV's and much more realistic. Finally, it's worth pointing out that throughout the trailer we see an awful lot of green (Grove Street Families) and some purple (Ballas), as well as graffiti alluding to Grove Street. Some fans have been vocal on forums and Twitter hoping for a cameo from CJ and/or other characters from San Andreas. It is quite possible some less famous characters will make cameo appearances. Trevor Finally, Trevor's trailer provides a lot a comic relief as he firmly cements himself as being a hilariously disgusting and psychotic maniac. Much of the noteworthy points have already been made while looking at Michael's and Franklin's trailers, but there are a couple of things worth mentioning in this one. Song: The Lost is confirmed to have a chapter in Los Santos. We see evidence of this in one of the first scenes where Trevor twats a Lost member round the face with a baseball bat. The unfortunate man is wearing a Lost jacket. The Lost logo is seen later on much more clearly in the background of this scene. NPC's are shown to use their mobile phones to capture footage of Trevor's mental actions. It would be interesting if NPC's witnessed you committing crimes would call the police to your location, and if you could kill them before they were able to make the call... More hints at car customisation with various vehicles in various scenes that appear to have some modifications when compared to their standard models. We a see an old lady attempt to stop Trevor from strangling a man who is presumably her husband, by flailing her handbag at him. It's possible that NPC AI will cause them to react based on events happening nearby. We get a much better look at those sexy new fire animations. New artwork was also released today, featuring the three main characters. So, which trailer was your favourite?

Rockstar have updated the Epsilon Program website giving you an opportunity to join their enlightment seminar. What this actually is is a casting call where 5 lucky people will get their likeness put into the game! You have from now until the 27th May to enter, and you must be over 18 to do so. A similar opportunity was given to fans for Max Payne 3 last year. Rockstar Games is holding a “casting call” event giving Grand Theft Auto fans an opportunity to be cast as one of five Epsilon Program members in Grand Theft Auto V. If you are chosen, your features will be used to create one of the five characters in the game.

Following on from the news that we'll be getting three new trailers on Tuesday, it turns out that various gaming journalists have seen the latest demo of Grand Theft Auto V, so we'll also be getting brand new previews of what they saw next week. The previews, which were announced today by certain gaming websites including CVG, are scheduled to go live a few days after the trailers on 2nd May at 5PM BST (12PM EST). As these are the first previews of the game to appear since November, they are certain to contain a wealth of new information. Stay tuned to TGTAP as we'll have links to previews from all the sites we can find, as well as a detailed summary of any new information.

Rockstar have just announced new Grand Theft Auto V trailers will be coming on the 30th April! Note the plural "trailers" - looks like we'll be getting three individual character trailers, possibly a bit shorter than a standard trailer but collectively worth a few minutes of footage. UPDATE: The trailers will be online at 4 P.M. BST in the UK (that's 11 A.M. EDT if you're in the US).

Yeah I dunno about that, if something happened in real life I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about it. In my opinion there's a couple of things it could be. First is that the messages they post on Twitter are going to tie into a backstory for something in the game, second is that they are simply just random tweets that are typical of what such a cult might talk about, just done to make the parody seem more real.

Yeah those rolling clouds caught my attention right away when I realised this was game footage, we also see a new character which lends further credence to the fact this could play more of a role in game than it has done in the past. I don't think Rockstar cares about the fact they could get sued, not even sure that's possible anyway, otherwise no parodies would exist of any content at all. Also it's not seeking to do any harm to Scientology or Scientologists themselves, it's just making fun of the whole thing. lso I'm fairly certain it makes fun of religions in general. The world being 157 years old for example, probably making fun of some Christians who believe the world is only 6000 years old and greatly exaggerating that. Overall it's a pretty funny parody and exactly what I'd expect from R*

After a few months of quiet, the Epsilon Program Twitter started posting again over the last couple of days, and yesterday talked about a screensaver being released. This has led to Rockstar releasing a screensaver today which you can see a preview of and download below. The screensaver appears to show in-game scenery and some new character art. The Epsilon Program is an obvious scam cult and a fictional parody of the real life cult known as the Church of Scientology, as well as a elements seen in a number of religions. The program was first seen as a teaser site for GTA: San Andreas and was referenced in later games including GTA IV. It may be worth noting that the real Church of Scientology is based in Los Angeles where GTA V is also set, so how much Epsilon will feature in the game remains to be seen, but it could play a bigger role than it has done in the past. We speculate this simply due to the game's focus on money - something that both real life Scientology and in-game Epsilon both attract easily.

GamerSpawn last night live streamed a 45 minute documentary on the history of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and the video of this is now available to watch as and when you want. For those who might not have heard of them before, GamerSpawn's YouTube channel racked up a substantial number of fans a couple of years ago after creating two great documentaries on the history of the Battlefield and Call of Duty franchises, the latter of which I felt was particularly good having been a huge CoD fan myself since the first game was released back in 2003. Back on topic, GamerSpawn's latest documentary focuses on Grand Theft Auto. This well narrated film is an enjoyable watch and will surely bring back a lot of good memories for those of you who have played all the games. For those who are perhaps newer fans to the series you will find it particularly insightful, and if you haven't played some of the earlier games I would certainly recommend getting hold of them. While many of you may know everything there is to know about Rockstar and GTA, there are plenty who won't, and if you're one of those people, be sure to give this a watch - you'll learn a few interesting things about the company and the games. Of course, covering the history of Grand Theft Auto isn't a new thing, and no doubt many of you will have read articles over the years which tend to come out during periods between releases. If you enjoyed watching this, GameTrailers' Grand Theft Auto Retrospective was also particularly notable, and we'd recommend watching that too if you have the time.

Rockstar has released two new artworks tonight, featuring Michael and Franklin. In Rockstar's own words: Click the images below to see the full versions or head over to our GTA V Artwork page to see more. Lots of different resolutions can be grabbed via Rockstar Downloads.

In honour of the recent releases of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories on the PlayStation Network, Rockstar have released high-res digital versions of the original printed maps that came with retail copies of the games. This follows on from a similar move they made last December with high-res GTA trilogy maps after the arrival of GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas on PSN. Click the thumbnails below to see them in full size. Link: Rockstar Newswire

I can't remember how much they were upon first release but that sounds about right, not sure it's changed. I just found our original news stories for the GTA III and VC sets but rather unhelpfully we didn't include the price...

Rockstar have updated the Kubrick collection on the Rockstar Warehouse with the addition of a San Andreas box set released for the first time today. The Vice City set has also been re-released in special 10th Anniversary Edition packaging, with the original sets having sold out a long time ago. Additionally, the GTA III set is still available, with only 200 sets remaining out of the initial 3000 that were made. Check out the pictures below for descriptions and links to the individual sets. To celebrate this update, you'll receive a 15% discount off your entire order if you purchase any Kubrick set, Rockstar will also throw in a Rockstar Keychain while supplies last. You'll need to order by 12th April to take advantage of this offer.

As announced last week, today marks the release of Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories on the PSN Store, completing Rockstar Games' PS2 Classics collection on the PS3 - at least for the Grand Theft Auto franchise (other classic Rockstar titles are apparently forthcoming). Both games were originally released exclusively for the Sony PSP in 2005 and 2006 respectively, but were ported to the PS2 the following years. PlayStation Store Links: Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (USA / Europe) - $9.99 / €9.99 / £7.99 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (USA / Europe) - $9.99 / €9.99 / £7.99

Wonder no more about how the finished GTA V mural will look, Rockstar have just revealed the full official cover art for Grand Theft Auto V! You can also grab this cover art as a wallpaper from www.rockstargames.com/downloads.

Rockstar originally told us they would be revealing the box art for Grand Theft Auto V by the end of January, but unfortunately it was pushed back following the announcement that the game would be delayed until September. But judging by this mural being painted up in New York, it's safe to say it'll be revealed fairly soon... Pictures courtesy of Redditor kotgfyad.

Yeah I forgot to add a TL;DR but that pretty much sums it up, might as well blame me

NOTE: We know these were released a few days ago but the site has suffered a lengthy downtime, which we've explained here. After a long drought without any word from Rockstar on any aspect of the game, the silence has finally broken, and today we have 10 beautiful new screenshots of GTA V. Check them out below! Link: Sunsets, Seas, Skies and So On... | All GTA V Screenshots

We're back! First off, we're sorry about the lengthy downtime we suffered during the past week. For the most part it was completely beyond our control. We did unfortunately suffer some data loss, some of which was simply due to corruption. Now if you continue reading I'll explain what happened, or just skip to the end if you don't care and just want to know wtf is up with the site right now. Back in the February we suffered some downtime, over 24 hours in fact. Scanning the system logs we were able to pinpoint this to an issue with one of the hard drives, but it was difficult to determine which one (we have 4 in a RAID 10 array) when the tools we have available were reporting them all as healthy! Fast-forward to last week, one of the hard drives decided to completely fail on us. Those of you who know about RAID will know that a single hard drive in the array failing is not a problem, so we simply asked the server techs to replace it for us. No big deal. As I was submitting the support ticket, I was running tests on the other 3 hard drives to check they were ok - turns out they weren't. A drive in the second pair was also failing, and as the test finished running, it did fail. This brought the server into a read-only state, we rebooted to allow the techs to replace the first bad disk. This was done, but we had to wait practically a whole day for it to finish filesystem checks and rebuild itself into the array. The bad news got worse after that and long story short, the OS had become corrupted and we were unable to get the server to boot up. Combine this problem with incredibly slow support staff and you see where this is heading... In the days that followed, they eventually replaced the second failed disk for us, and within another couple of days they finally got it into rescue mode and were able to get the server back online (today). Unfortunately this was when I discovered quite a lot of file integrity loss, corrupted files everywhere. After working all night to get the server back into a workable state, we realised that unfortunately our database system was completely fucked, for lack of a better phrase. Worse still, our on-site nightly backups were mostly lost. The most recent off-site backups we had were over 2 weeks old, but these had to do. What I've done is restored a database backup from 13th March. Anything that happened since then has been lost. As for files and uploads, we believe most of this is ok, but chances are there's some missing files we aren't aware of. Please let me know (in this topic) if you are experiencing errors or other weirdness on the forums or anywhere else on the website. While no one is to blame (except myself for not having more recent backups available) for what happened, we feel the support staff made us wait unreasonably long times to both replace the failed hardware and recover the system for us. Downtime was almost inevitable with these kinds of failures, but it certainly should not have been this long. For this reason, we will be transferring TGTAP (and our other sites) to a new server within the next couple of weeks. We don't expect there to be any downtime while this happens, though the forums will be turned offline for approx 15 mins to ensure we have successfully migrated the data. That's all.

Reminds me of Italy's Lamborghini Gallardo police car which they crashed, although I think that was just for show and not actually part of their pursuit force. While searching for pics of that I found one in a UK police livery too. Not sure why this exists.

So strange, I didn't even find any problems, I didn't change anything! Oh well at least it seems to be fixed now.

The sense of entitlement some people have is astounding. These people seem to want to know EVERYTHING about the game before it comes out and if they don't get that information they start crying their eyes out. Rockstar delete literally thousands of comments too, so you're only seeing a sample of the feedback they get. I don't bother commenting on newswire posts, everything gets buried anyway. The only responses people see are those short before and after they make their own post. Personally, I couldn't give a fuck. I'm glad they've delayed it. Hopefully these "fans" fuck off and find some other game to complain about instead of trying to ruin it for the rest of us. On a more practical note, it gives Rockstar more time to make the game better, it also gives me time to get shit done before I have to start working overtime on this site.

Yeah they said it would be able to stream PS1, 2 and 3 games. Which implies no software/hardware emulation in the console itself unfortunately. I still have my actual PS2 for playing old PS1/2 games anyway so I don't care so much, plus I don't play them often enough. However it does suck that it's not backwards compatible. Oh well.