GTA 4 mod brings over real-time character switching like in GTA 5

An upcoming mod for Grand Theft Auto IV is porting over one of GTA V’s biggest standout features, adding real-time character swapping between the game’s three protagonists.

Although the base game of GTA IV only had one main playable character, Niko Bellic, two more were made available in the game’s two expansions.

The Lost and Damned had you play as Johnny Klebitz, a member of a motorcycle club, while The Ballad of Gay Tony featured bodyguard and nightclub bouncer Luis Lopez.

Although the storylines of all three characters intertwined, their campaigns were kept separate in re-releases of GTA IV, with you having to swap expansions if you wanted to experience the stories in sequential order.

This was changed for GTA V to feature real-time swapping between each of the game’s three main protagonists, where you could swap out of playing as Michael and immediately switch to Trevor or Franklin doing their own activities.

GTA 4 mod will allow you to seamlessly swap between the game's three protagonists

An upcoming mod for Grand Theft Auto IV is changing all that, though, bringing over GTA V’s real-time character swapping to allow you to seamlessly switch between Niko, Johnny, and Luis.

The mod, created by a modder by the name of skireddv2, is entering beta testing this week and will put all three of GTA IV’s protagonists into a single dynamic world.

It works incredibly similarly to the way character swapping works in GTA V. A little wheel in the corner of the screen allows you to leave one character behind and swap into a new one. The camera then zooms out into a bird's-eye view of the city, before honing in on the character you’re swapping to.

These characters will also be shown to be living their own lives, and you may jump into them mid-activity. The demonstration by skireddv2 shows the player swapping out as Niko, before jumping into Luis, who is currently dancing at a nightclub.

The whole sequence takes around 20 seconds to complete, giving the game enough time to load all the assets in and have them working properly. Considering that the mod technically has to close down GTA IV and load up The Ballad of Gay Tony, all while keeping the loading seamless, we’d say this is pretty impressive.

The biggest problem that the mod solves is how missions are handled. In GTA IV, Johnny and Luis would make minor appearances in some missions, and you’d then experience those same missions from the other perspectives in The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned.

The mod keeps everything on track by having missions locked into a certain sequence, where you need to play the mission from one character’s point of view, and then do the next one in the sequence afterwards.

It even looks like characters will have their own individual stats for things like driving and shooting, similar to the GTA V protagonists.

Altogether, it’s a pretty cool mod that does something I’ve wanted for GTA IV ever since I played GTA V. It essentially means you can get the entire GTA IV experience in a single unified playthrough, rather than having to swap between the base game and its expansions when you need to.

If you’d like to keep up with the mod’s progress, you can follow Joey’s social media profile here.