So Grand Theft Auto IV is going to have a drinking mini-game wherein your character will stumble around more and more based on how much alcohol he consumers. Gee, I wonder if this is going to make it onto cable news channels in segments where some uptight lady from some civic organization who’s never played the game talks about how video games are bad for kids. Can’t wait.
Not that the uptight lady would be out of line, but it’s still fun to watch everyone shouting at the same time from their perspective TV boxes. The kicker here is the care and tenderment (real word?) that the GTA team put into the physics behind the drinking subsystem. It’s similar to the dynamic motion technology in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed where you’ll get a different outcome each time.
Says Rockstar Games CEO Torsten Reil,
“There is a drinking mini-game in very detailed form where you can get drunk and he can actually then stumble around and you have to get home. But all of that is fully simulated. So, it is not based on animation any more. It is actually all synthesized on the CPU. Which means that it has a completely different outcome every time you play.”
Why not just get drunk in real life and try to guide your character home? Oh wait, the kids. Yes, the kids. Sorry. Let’s just stick to realistically simulated drunkenness.
GTA IV drinking mini-game detailed [bit-tech.net]