GTA IV PC - Video Editor Preview

Forget about the fact that GTA IV will run at a considerably higher 2560x1600 resolution than the console versions when it's released early next month; ignore the fact that these visuals will come with improved streaming and draw distances, making Liberty City that bit more believable if it wasn't already thoroughly immersive; pay no attention to the fact that the multiplayer game will offer more player slots than the 16 on the consoles while also adding deeper match filtering options.

These are of course significant improvements for the now standard port of a GTA game to the PC and tweaks that will ensure the PC crowd stay hungry for the series, but the real appeal for the game comes from its new replay and editing features that Rockstar recently introduced to us in an extensive hands on session. We can safely say that these applications are far more than a gimmicky addition to feign new content for a PC release. Instead, the editing suite that accompanies these replays, which can be recorded at any point in-game, is so powerful and accessible that it will be as appealing to Machinima nuts as it is to the casual GTA IV player (if such a gamer exists).

Ready When You Are, Mr. DeMille

At any point during your journeys across Liberty City - be it during a mission, the arbitrary meanderings that every GTA player indulges in, or even in multiplayer games - it's possible to record a short reel of footage that can then be viewed as a replay. The length of this footage varies depending on the amount of action on-screen, so you may only get 20-30 seconds if it's all explosions and fleeing civilians, but a solitary stroll through Middle Park at night might allow you a bit more time on the reel. Gamers can stack up these replays in-game simply by pressing the 'back' button at any point on the Xbox 360 control pad (which is of course fully compatible and can be seamlessly swapped to from the keyboard/mouse), and once your happy with a selection of clips, it's then off to the editing suite to bring life to this vanilla gameplay footage.

The editor can be accessed seamlessly from Niko's mobile phone (much like you would a multiplayer lobby) and from here you'll see your recorded clips awaiting your directorial genius. Rockstar tells us that gamers will be able to archive hundreds of these clips in the editor and it'll be possible to chain multiple clips together before merging them into one fluid production. As far as the actual editing is concerned, the application makes use of a simple but very effective marker system. As you watch the playback, markers can be set at any point along the Time Bar to initiate a change of camera angle/field of vision, a different filter for the display, slowing down/speeding up the playback speed, or even adding music and text.

Those options may sound extensive, but it's not until you get into the detail of each option that you realise quite how extensive they really are. The camera work, in particular, allows the user so much creative freedom that the game may as well be bundled with a director's chair. Sure, it's possible to switch between a bunch of camera view pre-sets such as 'Chest', 'Overhead', 'Front', and 'Rear' etc., but the fun doesn't end there - far from it. You can also move into a free-cam or revolve the angle around different target points, which are designated to other NPCs within a certain radius of Niko's position in the game world.

Variables such as field of vision (a techie word for zoom), pitch (height), as well as the ability to revolve the camera around any fixed point offer near limitless amounts of scope. In practice, the only limit is that you're restrained to a given radius around Niko or a selected target (as far as we could tell, about 20-30 metres in the game world) to move the camera angle around in, but this is ample room for the most part. You can even set smooth transitions from the set camera angle on one marker point to another perspective in the next marker, or just stick with a razor sharp cut from one angle to the other Edgar Wright style.

As you might expect, this allows gamers to recreate some of their favourite Hollywood scenes in Liberty City. We fooled around for a good half-hour trying to recreate the moment from Ferris Bueller's Day Off where two parking valets take Cameron's dad's 1961 Ferrari 250GT California for a joyride and then launch it off a hump in the road. The camera angle is from the ground looking up as this prancing horse goes airborne over the top of the lens, all in glorious slow-mo. Remaking this with Niko at the helm and Little Jacob in the passenger seat was surprisingly easy as we simply got the footage needed, locked the angle in free-cam to the tarmac, and pitched it upwards to capture the overlooking car before adding another marker and panning down to watch its landing. We could even add super slow-mo with the aid of the editor's nine speed settings (-4 through to +4 with 0 for the default game speed).

All that fun and we haven't even told you about the filters yet! Our personal favourite is 'Sketch', which adds a black and white colour scheme as well as a comic book style filter over the top of the game's textures. It's a bit like viewing Liberty City through the graphic art style found in Art Spiegelman's Maus (minus the Nazi cats and Jewish mice). Then there are silver screen emulators such as 'Sepia', 'Noire', and 'Cinema'. As the name suggests, 'Noire' displays only black and white tones, while 'Sepia' adds the faded brown look of an old photograph. 'Cinema', on the other hand, looks like the aged celluloid of a 70s B movie. All of them will add plenty of mood to any production and provide ample tools for players to fool around with.

After that things get a bit more dazzling. Using the word bright to describe filters such as 'Green', 'Red', and 'Colors' would be a bit of an understatement. 'Colors', for example, reminded us of old-skool 90s PC gaming because it was as if we'd run a game with a 256 colours VGA display requirement on our 16 colours VGA display, Windows 3.11, 386 PC. In other words, the colour palette is full off fluorescent primary colours and the word 'clashing' doesn't quite describe the result. The editor's 'Green' filter is similar to a night-vision camera but without the interference, while 'Red' is reminiscent of the bleed-out screen in Gears. Make no mistake, there are plenty of variations to play around with as far as the filters are concerned and there are more that we haven't had the space to mention here.

As if all that editing power wasn't enough control at your fingertips, Rockstar has also enabled users to fool around with audio levels such as sound effects, speech, and music. Players will be able to custom build a soundtrack for their creations by selecting music from the existing list of radio stations in GTA IV. There's even the ability to add text to playback at any point along the Time Bar and the editor has supplied a variety of fonts, colours, and sizes for this feature. Once you're done with your video masterpiece, it can then be uploaded in either 720p or 1080p high-def to the Rockstar Social Club and here's where the real fun of user generated content will begin as soon as the game's released later this year.

Bifocal Euphoria

When the console versions of GTA IV came out, we were astounded by the level of detail for NPC animation that Rockstar North managed with its use of Natural Motion's Euphoria technology. Having gone hands on with this new editor, we can now see Euphoria's brilliance in sharp focus and it's only impressed us more by the strength and variety of its animation, almost as if we've now been given a handy pair of specks to admire the show while we were short-sighted before. Watching a gunmen desperately stagger away from a shootout while shooting blindly behind himself is but one example of the intricate behaviour that can be replayed in slow motion and we guarantee that this feature alone can entertain for hours.

The sharper resolutions also reveal levels of depth that couldn't be fully appreciated previously. Fine hairs of detail, such as the heating strips on cars' rear windows or the blue glowing ends of subway train sparks, now show up crisper and are realised to their full potential. We certainly noticed the game's longer draw distances, allowing us to see further across Liberty City's skyline than was possible in the console versions, while improved streaming has rectified the small amounts of pop-up that the PS3 and Xbox 360 games had. As with most PC games, there is a graphical configuration section in the menu screen that allows users to custom set levels of detail for their rig. One feature that we particularly enjoyed in this menu was a slider scale for the amount of traffic in the game. Set to 35 in the console versions, gamers can now choose any level of density between 1 and 100.

Things have changed since the last GTA port. Gamers now expect extra content for ports that are released months after the original versions. Believe us when we tell you that this PC version's replay and editing features are a much more significant gift than a few extra missions could ever be.