Grand Theft Auto IV does not deviate too much from the original gameplay concept that made the first games from the series so popular. It is still that balanced mixture between action-driving-based game with that sandbox-style content but still so accessible for almost everyone. Many of the modern action-adventures games have 'borrowed' or even cloned this concept, some of them becoming best-sellers (Far Cry 2, Just Cause), or cheap copies (Driver - Parallel Lines, Scarface, etc). So if it is so successful why should they change it? Better improve it! But sometimes to improve is harder than to invent a new one. Back in 2004 when Rockstar North began the first steps in development, they realized that if they will continue developing the franchise they should keep the concept and improve other elements that might actually increase the quality of the product: story, graphics, physics, additional content, multiplayer mode.

Story

In terms of story, GTA games always suffered from a lack of purpose. Although it featured good voice acting and funny dialogs, the whole cinematic scenes were created somehow as an excuse for starting another mission with the same goal: steal a car, execute an enemy, drive from point A to point B, etc. Mafia (developed by Illusion Softworks) was a huge contender and a winner from the story point of view. But in 2008 GTA IV has succeeded in actually creating a plot that animates the story and the whole gameplay, recreating a strong experienced inspired from real life and real social problems, not from movies, like most of the games do today.

You play as Niko Bellic, an Eastern European immigrant and a veteran of the Bosnian War, who has left his country and crime life to begin a new one on American soil. Following his cousin advises, he comes to Liberty City (a virtual copy of New York and an improved copy of the old Liberty City present in GTA III), to meet him and help him to achieve the American Dream. Roman, Niko's cousin, is nothing else but a poor immigrant citizen, owner of a small taxi company who is indebted by most of the gang mobs in the area. Being a part of his family, Niko gets automatically involved in his cousin's problems and realizes that the American Dream is nothing else but a curse, and the life in ghettos is no more brutal that the one back home. Most of the main characters in the game come from Eastern Europe, Rockstar revealing the social problems from that part of Europe and the immigration wave that hit Western World in the late nineties till today, from the former Soviet Union states.

For the first time the player can make moral decisions and choose if a character should live or die, in some of the key scenes of the game. But still this aspect will not have a major impact to the whole gameplay like in a classic RPG.