Offhand (and you can tell I'm looking forward a lot to this game), the main additions are;
- need to eat (with ability to get fat/thin, or overdo it and throw up)
- ability to excercise (i.e. gym)
- mix & match clothing, haircuts & tattoos (continuing the outfits idea from VC)
- home invasion missions
- basketball mini-game(?)
- ability to swim
- cars get dirty over time
- ability to customize cars with custom paintjobs, spoilers & nitros
- more intelligent pedestrian AI and behaviour (i.e. can 'stalk' a ped and they'll spend the day acting normally - going to house, to work, back home, etc)
- motorbike cops
- pedalled bicycles
- the countryside, including rednecks, camper vans, quad bikes and combine harvesters
- a big mountain
- motorways
- flyable planes (at the very least the Dodo has wings now)
- playing area something like 5-6 times that of VC, plus more interiors. 3 cities the size of VCs, based on LA, Las Vegas & San Fran (including the golden Gate Bridge by another name, maybe?)
- rag-doll physics
- improved lighting model (which also differs depending on the region)
- ability to run a casino (TBC)
- ability to run a gang (building on the idea from VC, cept this time the members should be more useful than running away from fights, including 4 person drivebys)
- 3 times more music (including the Verve - wayhey!)
- helicopters have a proper blinding searchlight
- Improved graphics engine (30-50% more polys), and little or no loading times.
It sounds like it'll improve on pretty much every aspect of Vice City. Hell, I'd buy it as long as it was the same game in a different city.
IIRC one of the SCP programmers worked on Vice City QA, hactually.
