If you’ve played GTA IV, this probably isn’t your first time of hearing the name OpenIV. It can be used to view, edit, and mod various RAGE-engine titles. As you can probably guess, the IV in the name comes from GTA IV because the program was originally only for GTA IV. As the team was able to discover more about the RAGE engine via project .black, they’ve been able to incorporate new games and features into it. Now OpenIV has become more of a brand name than anything.Prior to OpenIV 2.5’s launch, many gamers were disappointed to hear Boris Vorontsov, the man behind ENBSeries mods, say that GTA V will be unmoddable. It’s clear that Boris wasn’t completely right, because no one expected the files to be decrypted so fast. However, GooD-NTS informed me that Boris wasn’t totally wrong, and modding GTA V will be significantly harder than modding GTA IV.
Due to the increased difficulty, decrypting the files was no easy task. While the quickness of the release may suggest otherwise, the four-man team had to work incredibly hard and around the clock in order to get the files viewable. GooD-NTS also told me that being able to edit these files will probably be harder and take even longer. While he had no official ETA, he hopes for a release within a month or two, but the way GTA V will react with mods is still unclear. There is also no way of telling how Rockstar will react to all of this and whether they will take legal action or not. Fortunately, the .black team is confident that Rockstar can’t take any legal actions due to the laws of their country.
If you’ve played Grand Theft Auto IV on PC before, you’re probably wondering why GTA V seems so locked down compared to it. A plausible explanation is that Rockstar sees mods as a threat to GTA: Online (and therefore a threat to the money they can make off of it). According to GooD-NTS, the best option would be to just stay away from Online so there can be full modding capabilities in singleplayer. If you really want to use mods while playing with friends, there will likely be a unofficiall mulitplayer alternative released by modders (I was informed that there may actually already be people working on this).
While mods are one of the most exciting things about PC gaming, we cannot forget about the tools. As GooD-NTS told me, “tools first, mods later.” One day we may finally be able to see over-the-top mods in GTA V, but there is no way that can happen before the mod tools are released.
If you want to keep up to date with OpenIV, check out their social media outlets.
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/openiv
Twitter - https://twitter.com/OpenIV
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/OpenIV
VK.com - https://vk.com/open_iv (Russian)
Official Site - http://openiv.com/
