Former Rockstar Dev Solved a 16-Year Mystery in GTA IV

It’s been over 16 years since Rockstar released Grand Theft Auto 4 in 2008. As the highest-rated PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, the masterpiece open-world title created many great memories for fans and also left a few secrets that have remained unsolved over the years. 

One of them is a ferry boat at the Terminal, which appeared in the game’s first trailer but did not show up in the final game. Recently, a fan brought this up to Obbe Vermeij, the former Rockstar technical director (first spotted by Games Radar). His answer lets the community finally understand the real reason behind it. To many’s surprise, instead of performance issues that it might cause, “it's more that they were causing other issues with physics (cars sitting on a boat). As well as people queuing and getting on and off. They were more trouble than they were worth.”

Below is the "Things Will Be Different" trailer for GTA 4, and around the 13-second mark, you can see what the ferry terminal of Liberty City looks like:

As an ex-Rockstar dev who has worked on GTA 3, 4, San Andreas, and Vice City, Obbe Vermeij also shared his thoughts about whether the highly anticipated GTA 6 will be released in 2025 as planned. According to him, Rockstar decided to delay GTA 4 four months before the original launch date; plus, GTA 6 will sell for over a decade with no competition. So in his opinion, Rockstar will probably take time and only release the game when the team is "100% happy with it." 

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