At 6 PM Eastern/3 PM Pacific today, Rockstar Games unleashed the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV upon the Internet. Similarly, GTA fans have crashed Rockstar's site as well as just about any other site with the trailer on it. Hopefully, these sites will soon be back up, but here's what we now know:

- The game is set in Liberty City, and it looks like Rockstar has put a lot of effort into making the city a very realistic replication. If not for the parody names for corporations, I would think that they'd decided to actually make it NYC and not Liberty City. Landmarks that are visible, like the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, look great and realistic. It's also set in the modern day, as is evident by the cars that our main character was driving in the trailer.

- We get another first: the main character appears to be Russian-American, perhaps signaling that the Russian mafia is going to have a big part in this game. They had a bit part helping out the Ballaz in GTA: San Andreas. He also kind of looks like French movie star/bad-ass Jean Reno. Very nice.

- You know that Coke commercial that ran during the Super Bowl? The one everyone thought was a "preview" of what GTA IV would look like? Yep, it's about that graphically good, or at least enough to stack up to other games like Crackdown and Saints Row. One big issue with the GTA series is gone.

- There's trains and what appears to be a ferry in the game, which might mean that there will be more modes of transportation. It's hard to tell if that ferry is strictly ornamental or is rideable, but given the "you can ride anything" attitude past games have had, you should be able to run from the cops in it... at least at some point.

- Realistic weather, or at the very least, we're actually getting shadows that change depending on where the sun is in the sky. You know, like it is in the real world. It's something small that's going to add to the game's environment and help the series catch up to the competition.

Unfortunately, that's about all that can be pulled from the first trailer. Hopefully, Rockstar Games will be releasing more information soon on this highly anticipated game for the Xbox 360 and PS3.