@Matt:
Yeah, but the whole crux is the journey to this plotpoint/finale. Nico had survived the war in Yugoslavia without many scars. He seemed like a regular dude in the beginning of the game, but as it progressed you got to see the other side of the character more and more. Violent outbursts, little regard for human life, sometimes even little regard for his own life. Over the course of the game this led to various reeeeal bad scenarios and ultimately Nico changed a whole lot over the course of the game (or we could see more of his true persona).
The thing about the scene I think you described is: The guy you were hunting down, you were trying to blame for everything that went wrong is basically a different version of Nico himself- even down to the look. So Nico- and the player- sees this guy and sort of sees what he has become himself or what lay ahead if he kept on with his way of life. So I thought the choice of sparing his life made sense. Even a lot of the other choices made a lot of sense. They added some roleplaying into the whole thing. Don´t forget that you don´t have to kill hundreds of guys in this game. There´s always the option of just avoiding them or just taking out their legs for example. So -in a limited way- you can play your own version of Nico.
While I thought the story could have been told in a little more streamlined way and it lost some momentum sometimes, I still like it a whole lot. Guess it depends.. if you were looking for something like The Getaway, a completely serious crime story, you were probably disappointed by the goofy stuff in the game. The problems with mission design stemmed mostly from Rockstar playing it safe and not trying too much stuff with the missions. They got a little repetitive but didn´t have that many frustrating elements as a result.
No spoiler tags, since the game came out in 2008 :D
Log in to comment