Mystery of Missing Ferries in GTA 4 Explained After 17 Years

Ferries appeared in the teaser trailer for Grand Theft Auto 4, but not in the game itself because they caused too many problems for the developers.

Jacob Blazewicz

Source: Rockstar Games / Take-Two Interactive.

Obbe Vermeij continues to share interesting facts about the Grand Theft Auto series. This time, the former developer revealed what happened to the ferries in GTA 4.

Ships moored on the river near the marina could be seen in the first small trailer for the fourth installment of tRockstar's series. However, we couldn't find them in the released game, which disappointed some players. Especially since the ferry terminal can still be found in GTA 4's files, confirming beyond any doubt that it wasn't just, to put it bluntly, a lie made up for the trailer.

The answer given by the developer of GTA 3 and GTA: Vice City to a question from one of the Internet users about this lack was simple: adding ships to GTA IV caused too many problems for the developers.

As Vermeij wrote, the trouble with ships was not about drops in performance or loading the game world (as in the case of Liberty City in GTA 3). Ferries were particularly disliked by the engine of the fourth Grand Theft Auto (incl. with a reliable physics system), which caused a lot of errors. Cars "sitting" on decks, passengers getting on and off in a queue - developers had so many problems with this addition that it was ultimately deemed not worth the trouble.

Cutting content is a typical process in the production of any medium - even books, but also movies, not to mention video games. Especially those that take many years to develop and offer a huge open world, such as the latest installments of the GTA series. Probably the sixth installment will not include everything that Rockstar planned, but - let's hope - it will probably not give the players reasons to complain about the content.

The release of GTA 6 is expected to take place in 2025. The game will initially be released on PS5 and XSX/S consoles and will only later be available on PC.

Grand Theft Auto IV

April 29, 2008

PC PlayStation Xbox
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Author: Jacob Blazewicz

Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).