The gaming world is on tenterhooks for the Grand Theft Auto 4 trailer set to appear tomorrow night, Thursday 29th, at 11 pm on www.gtaiv.com. A recent e-mailer sent to the Rockstar database had the tagline, “things will be different”, and we’d expect no less from Rockstar. Every GTA has been different, not just from the last but from every other game out there. 

Aside from the tagline, literally nothing is known about the game yet.  There are so many questions - where will it be set?  Who will you play?  What will the storyline be?  Will there be online features (aside from the promised downloadable episodes)? 

I’m hoping to see a game based in Europe, somewhere unusual - Budapest, Barcelona, Glasgow.  And how about more character creation possibilities?  San Andreas let us alter our character through diet and haircuts, but what about creating a new one from scratch?  I want to play a girl, a really tough, cool, girl who does proper biting, but a girl none the less.  While we’re at it, how about a story that moves away from the clichéd “gangsta” shtick so overused in GTA clones.  And why not take the online further than the likes of Saints Row and the PSP GTA Stories games, straying from the standard deathmatch modes into more of an MMO affair?

Looking back on what I’ve just written I realise I’m asking for a GTA MMORPG with a pretty girl running around a Spanish cultural capital, and to be frank, although things may well be different in GTAIV, I’m not sure they’ll be quite that different. At the same time I think my demands will be far exceeded by those of the frothing-at-the-mouth public, desperately waiting for the first glimpse of what to expect from this game of games. 

I hope Rockstar haven’t peaked with San Andreas, setting the bar too high and finding themselves unable to beat it.  It’s happened many times before. It’s the age old next-gen leap, and it’s often the biggest boys who can’t bridge the gap from one platform to the next. If any game can do it though it’s GTA. I’ll bet my baseball bat on it.

Just to up the anticipation a little more, here’s the countdown TV ad that was shown on the FX Channel in the US last week.  Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk ...