The long-awaited Grand Theft Auto IV trailer hit the web just a few moments ago. Unfortunately, the immense deluge of traffic immediately bogged down Rockstar’s website, making it difficult to view.

It’s a beautiful thing once it’s running, though. In flashing shots of the city, rendered incredibly in the game’s next-gen engine, the camera pans across the Flatiron Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Of course, there are also ads for Max Renda and "Top Hooker" on billboards, as well as the Liberty Ferry Terminal (lettering ominously falling off of the sign), the Getalife building, and a movie poster for "I Slept With Your Mom." This may be an actual, licensed New York city, but it’s definitely got the Rockstar touch.


After half a minute of flybys, sped-up shots of crowds, and general confirmation that Rockstar knows how to make a next-gen engine, a voice-over starts. In a thick Eastern European or Russian accent, the narrator says, "Life is complicated. I killed people. Smuggled people. Sold people. Perhaps here, things will be different." We see the (presumable) speaker, a light-skinned bearded man, looking moodily just above the camera as the voiceover plays. The view shifts to a shot of a boat as the narration hits "smuggled people." It’s a giant shipping vessel, the Platypus out of Liberty City. Then the IV, the Rockstar logo, and the rating pending sign flash up in succession, ending the trailer.

The game’s setting sure looks like New York City, with all of its impossible-to-mistake sights and landmarks, but discrepancies like boats sailing from Liberty City and the Liberteen sign sprawled across a city billboard make it hard to say what Rockstar really has in store for us in GTA IV. We undoubtedly find out more as the information blackout is lifted over the coming months. For now, we can just say that the game’s already looking promising.