Grand Theft Auto IV

Warning: spoilers abound.

Grand Theft Auto IV is a rather contradictory and schizophrenic game; contradictory in what it establishes within the narrative and tonal direction, and schizophrenic in what it wants to be, be-it a Grand Theft Auto game as we know it or a stand-alone game in and of itself. By taking the series in a more serious direction, Rockstar have replaced the oft-imitated sandbox we've come to love in GTA with a mission based action game that takes place in a very large city; a mission based game whose narrative and character development collapses after the first act.

I'm going to skip the technical side of things; it's common sense that GTA IV looks stunning, the voice acting is great, it's sharply written, there are a few glitches and framerate concerns. So let's get straight into the good stuff.

As we all know by now, you play Niko Bellic, a veteran of the Bosnian War and immigrant from Eastern Europe. Niko's motivations for coming to Liberty City are revealed in the course of the story: to work with his cousin Roman, to escape Bulgarin and to find "that special someone". When he arrives in Liberty City, Niko is greeted by Roman and is taken to Roman's "mansion" i.e. his crappy apartment. We are then introduced the Mallorie (Roman's girlfriend), Vlad (to whom Roman owes money), the importance of Roman's business, Michelle (Mallorie's friend and the first love interest) Little Jacob (a rasta who you won't understand), Brucie (Roman's…odd friend who he met on the internet), Faustin (a major player in Broker) and Dimitri (Faustin's right hand man). These characters are introduced steadily with plenty of time devoted to them developing. We are shown their characteristics, their motives and how their relationships with both the player and eachother evolve. This is made all the better by some fantastic writing and voice acting; it's just phenomenal stuff all around. We learn to care for some characters, detest others and question the true motives of others.

Take Michelle, for example. On the surface she seems to be the usual tacked on love interest that games seem to enjoy attempting these days. You meet her in a rather simple mission whereby you pick her and Mallorie up from the train station, then bring them to Michelle's apartment. When push comes to shove, Niko gets her number and takes her on a date. It is here that things get interesting. On your first playthrough you might notice something a touch odd about her, but you won't make anything more of it. When she's asked where she comes from, she stutters and says "I'm from…ohh…out East". She asks whether Roman is involved in criminal activities, if Niko can get her drugs for her friend, if Niko is involved with some bad people and so on. Maybe she's just curious, who knows. Later in the story it is revealed that Michelle is a government official tasked with keeping tabs on Niko. When you think back on those dates, all those questions seem less innocent. Credit must be given to the writers for making that portion interesting.

With that said, it makes so little sense to me that they removed Michelle altogether. She was, Roman aside, the most interesting character in the game. There was an established relationship with Niko that revolved around trust and betrayal, she clearly had a troubled past if she was brought in by UL Paper Guy and she seemed capable of doing what was necessary to get her life back. There was just so much potential there for some interesting sub-plot.

Anyway, from a narrative perspective, everything that occurs in Broker just works really well as an overall setup. You have characters you care about (Roman, Mallorie, Jacob), characters you hate (Vlad, Dimitri) and an established story arc (revenge against Dimitri and helping Roman get back to where he was) It's such a shame, then, that everything goes straight to hell after Roman's Sorrow. Actually, a word on Roman's Sorrow; that mission is a brilliant piece of character development. If you do not feel sorry for Roman during that drive to Bohan then you have no soul.

Once you leave Broker, the carefully constructed story is replaced by reasons to go and kill a large amount of gangsters. Sure, there's loosely tied together elements (the diamond heist and the Heat mission, for example), but the development of the narrative just goes out the window. At random stages Niko will complain about a lack of money or how he just wants to find "that special someone", but instead of feeling tied together in the overall story arc, they feel tacked on as a reminder that "Hey, you're not blindly killing stuff, there's a reason for it". With that said, it's hard to feel connected to Niko's plight for more money because A) he has already amassed a quarter of a million by that point and B) there's nothing to spend money on.

A rather large problem comes in the fact that Niko goes from a crushed soul who came to Liberty City to be with his cousin and escape the results of the war to a well dressed Jason Voorhees. In Broker he "is trying to make the right decisions" and he thinks that "we must only follow orders if we agree with them", yet in Algonquin he is shooting down police helicopters and murdering people for fun. Sorry, but no. It just ruins whatever connection was built up beforehand whereby I felt bad for running people over just because it's something that Niko wouldn't do; I sympathised with his attempt at keeping his life somewhat clean after the war even though he was slowly being dragged into the criminal life of Liberty city.

One of the more disappointing aspects of the game is "the special someone story" arc; it's just another terrible excuse for Niko killing a million people. He does dozens of missions for these people, and at the end he slips them a small reminder that they owe him a favour for butchering half of Liberty City. That small favour is helping him find the person who betrayed him in the Bosnian War. These moments come out of absolutely nowhere; there's no build up, Niko shows no interest in this person until then and when we finally do find this person (well, two people) one of them is gay and we're given the option of saving Darko. What?! Niko gave up his soul by murdering people, ruined his cousin's life, worked for the Mafia to then have a bit of character development and ethical sense forced on him? Yeah, right. If Niko truly came to Liberty City to find this person, it would have been the absolutely first thing on his mind; he wouldn't wait until UL Paper Guy to bring it up. No matter what people may say, "that special someone" is a tacked on excuse for the game focusing on the mindless killing missions that occur after Broker as opposed to developing the actually narrative i.e. revenge against Dimitri.

It doesn't help Niko as a character when the supporting characters drop in and out of the story at will. New people are introduced at far too quick a pace; how is Niko supposed to establish meaningful relationships with these people when they disappear for large amounts of time, and those who are there for more than 5 minutes just ask him to kill people for money? Once you leave Broker, you have: Elizabeta, Manny, Playboy X, Dwayne, Packie, Francis, Derrick, Gerald, Kate, Ray, Phil, Pegorino, UL Paper Guy, Bernie, Darko, Gambetti and other smaller characters. The sole purpose of these characters is to drive you through the city, not the narrative or establish relationships. The only person who's given any real time is Packie, and while he's a good character (especially the emotional scars from this family background) the points he's earned from me are taken away by Kate.

That leads me to one the biggest flaws I've found in GTA IV; the assumption that the player is taking part in the dates/friend activities. I'll put that another way; the effectiveness of the more emotional moments of the narrative is predicated largely upon the amount of time you've put into the friend system. Just think about it; how effective is the Michelle twist if you haven't been taking her on dates? Does Kate becoming a serious romance option (and thusly Niko contacting her on whether to make the deal or not, and his reaction if she's killed) make sense if you haven't been taking her on dates? Of course not, but the game assumes you have been (I wasn't, mainly because the activities are some of the most boring hours of gameplay I've had to endure).

I'm also of the opinion that the friend system is a rather poor excuse for forgetting about the well developed characters from Broker. Let's say you ignore the friend activities (most people do); from the time you leave Broker, when is the next time you see Roman, Jacob or Brucie in the story? Sure, they might call now and then, but there's a massive amount of time without seeing any of them. Even when it's helpful to see them through the activities, oftentimes just a reminder that they still exist, they're mostly one dimensional. When you go on their activities Jacob always talks about getting high, Brucie always talks about being genetically different and Dwayne is always depressing. There's just no motivation to hang out with them.

Before I go into the friend system's effect on the conclusion of the story, I need to talk about 3 characters: Pegorino, Dimitri and Bulgarin. Dimitri represents the complete and utter lack of character development after the first act; we hear from him two or three times before the penultimate mission and that's it. How is that a well established villain? Bulgarin represents the lost potential of most of the characters; he's mentioned at certain stages, he has a dark history with Niko (resulting in Niko fleeing Eastern Europe), he could be established as a major character but he's demoted to making two cameo appearances. Finally, Pegorino represents the character development that occurs once you leave Broker; whatever is there is forced, dependant on money and in his own case, is contradictory. In the first mission for him, we're told that he "got to the top because I think of all the outcomes. I know all the consequences before they happen", yet he gets screwed by Dimitri or killed by Niko? No, Rockstar, that's poor character development.

Now, let's look at the conclusion to the story. Disregard Pegorino because he comes out of nowhere. Think of the main people who are involved at the end of the game; Roman, Jacob, Mallorie, and Dimitri. Within the context of the narrative, those characters hadn't been relevant since Broker yet the crux of the conclusion depends largely on characters that you would only have seen if you were using the friend system. It would have been far more effective to remove the pointless characters (everyone in Bohan and the McReary's) and have the above four consistently featured within the story, as opposed to relegated to the friend mini-game. I think that's why the ending left a bad taste in people's mouth; they stopped caring about the characters by then. Even as a whole, half of the cast could be cut without any effect on the story whatsoever thus allowing more time to develop the important characters, especially Dimitri.

There are many things that make the friend system unappealing: most of the activities feel unfinished and are generally quite boring, the conversations (with the exception of Michelle and Packie) are entirely one-dimensional, they seem to call you at the most inopportune time, even when you kindly say "no" to them they get upset and most of all, the rewards aren't worth it. Sure, Jacob gives you cheaper weapons, but Niko has enough money to buy as much ammo as he wants in the regular stores. Sure, Roman gives you free cabs, but it's quicker to get a normal one. Sure, Dwayne sends his "homies" to help you, but they're useless.

A new feature to the GTA series is that at certain points in the main story you're offered the choice of killing certain characters (Dwayne included). While it's a nice touch, it's not executed all that well. For choices like this to be effective the player must A) care about the character they're about to kill/save and B) it must suit the character they're playing. In a role playing game, for example, the choice is made based on how you have defined your own character. The difference here is that the character of Niko is set in stone, so any choice must suit Niko or the player feels disconnected. Why, for example, would Niko not kill Francis? It's made very clear throughout the story that Francis is a ****, Niko does not like him and that Derrick is a far better brother. Giving the player the choice of not killing him feels silly, as if the choice is there for the sake of it, not that it's meaningful to the character or story arc.

I guess it's obvious at this point that Rockstar have taken a more serious approach to GTA IV, and while I appreciate the effort, it's just not done that well. The most jarring, for me, was the stark contrast between the serious tone of the story and the completely over-the-top satire. In prior GTAs there were many outlandish elements to the story (burning a field of weed, making the lights in Vice City look like breasts, dropping porn pamphlets on the streets). What this meant was that the events that took place in the story were well suited to the setting. That, and the satire in III/Vice City/San Andreas was more subtle. In IV, for example, you could easily have an emotional experience in the story only to turn on the radio to hear about ordering babies in a box over the internet or how hot America's Next Top Hooker is. They just don't complement eachother, at all.

Stemming from that is how the missions are structured compared to previous GTAs. As mentioned above, there were many memorable and unique missions in III/Vice City/San Andreas. Sayonara Salvatore, the assassination on the golf course, burning the weed, the porn studios and so on; they were just really fun and imaginative. By the time you hit Algonquin, you've seen it all as far as mission diversity goes. The vast majority of the missions require you to drive to a location, find the target and either kill him or chase him. Oh yeah, most of the chases are scripted. Let's elaborate; in a scripted chase, it is impossible to kill the target until they reach X location. No matter how many bullets you shoot at their car, they will not stop. This can become frustrating in the early parts of the game when it's nigh on impossible to tell which chases and scripted and which aren't. After a while though you can usually tell; the cars move as if a child were moving little toys while screaming "VROOM!!!"

That highlights a major disappointment in GTA IV; the linearity (and repetitiveness) of the missions and the complete and utter lack of sandboxing. Take the assassination on the golf course from Vice City; you could snipe him from a distance, shoot out the tyres in his golf cart so he couldn't get away, push the carts of his body guards into the water so they couldn't chase you or any number of unique methods. In IV, however, there's usually only one way of completing a mission: Rockstar's way. By the end of the game I was pretty tired of the usual drive-kill-chase-kill approach with no way for my imagination to have any input. That approach to mission design seems counter-intuitive to what a sandbox should be about; giving you plenty of toys to play with and opening up a range of possibilities for completing missions. The missions are also in dire need of checkpoints which is something that R* have ignored for 7 years now.

That sandbox has been scaled back in other ways, too. In terms of things to do, GTA IV is sorely lacking. Gone are the fire truck and ambulance missions from the previous three episodes. Gone are the businesses and purchasable houses from Vice City. Gone are the character customisation, vehicle customisation and dirt bikes from San Andreas. Gone are the jetpacks, flamethrowers, tanks, military and parachutes. While it's true that the above don't suit the "serious" world that R* wanted to create, it just goes against what GTA is all about; doing crazy **** in a huge world coupled with insane replayability. I just don't see why I'm allowed steal 50 cars in front of a large crowd or carry weapons in open daylight if I'm not allowed to parachute off the Statue of Happiness.

Certain trademarks of the series, the hidden packages, rampages and hidden jumps have been changed for the worse. Rampages have been removed entirely, which is a swift kick to the nuts. Hidden package have been replaced by 200 (!) flying rats. These flying rats are an absolute pain in the ass. Why? Because you have to shoot them. Shooting them means attracting attention, and since there are cops everywhere, it gets a touch annoying when you get a wanted star every time you shoot one of the *******. Hidden jumps are largely the same, although the cars have a tendency to flip over more often than you'd like. What's an even swifter kick in the nuts than the removal of the rampages is the removal of rewards. Remember how you'd get a weapon outside your safe house for every 10 hidden packages? Or how you'd become fireproof for completing the fire truck missions? Or how you could increase your total health for doing the ambulance missions? They're all gone. You get a helicopter (that you can get anyway by using a simple cheat) when you get all 200 rats, and that's it. Thanks Rockstar!

Liberty City then, while well designed, just isn't a city suited for gaming. Sure, it's very pretty and (probably) mimics New York quite well, but there's no substance to the flash; there's just nothing to do in this city. Vice City was a great city; you had plenty to do, the city suited the story that was being told (as did the soundtrack) and it was interesting to learn off. San Andreas was the same. Liberty City just seems like a place you're meant to admire as opposed to play in; but I'm a gamer, not a sightseer, so that doesn't appeal to me I'm afraid.

The gameplay elements, while they've been improved with regards to a Grand Theft Auto game, still aren't up to par with other games that are on offer. The cover system isn't as fluid as a Gears of War (and can become quite annoying when you want to switch between cover), the auto-aim still targets enemies 100 feet away when you're being shot in the face at point blank range with a shotgun and the on-foot controls are clunky at best. So while it's a step in the right direction for GTA, it's a smaller step than I would have liked.

It's pretty difficult to write a conclusion for a game like GTA IV. If the entire game was of the quality of Broker and everything that occurred there I'd probably call it "Game of the Forever" and leave it there, but everything that happens on Algonquin and Alderney highlight a failing narrative, pointless characters, an unfulfilling conclusion, repetitive missions and questionable design choices. So while Broker and the quality of the overall presentation are enough to raise GTA IV to "an enjoyable game" status, it's a fairly large step back from prior episodes and a game that's mainly wasted potential.