Grand Theft Auto IV

As always, this post will contain spoilers.

I've always had a fairly ambivalent relationship to the Grand Theft Auto series. I played the first two top down GTAs back on my old 486 machine, but I never finished them. I never owned a PS2, so I only played GTA3 and Vice City years later when they arrived on PC... and by that time, they were so dated they really weren't worth playing.

I think GTA: San Andreas changed that for me. It was the first GTA game where your character was more than just a cipher for the player. CJ was his own entity and didn't apologize for it. The fact that many people complained that they were "forced" to play a black character only legitimized the Hausers' decision to appropriate West Coast "urbanity" in their game (although, from various reports within the gaming press, the Hausers are offended by accusations of appropriation). San Andreas went beyond the simple parody and satire of American life - although it still did so amusingly - to address issues of race and masculinity. The fact that a simple Google Scholar search will yield several articles on race and San Andreas indicates that the game certainly touched a nerve.

There are a lot of things that I found interesting with San Andreas that I'm sure other people have written about. My favourite scene has to be when CJ and his friends crash through the "R" of the giant SPRUNK sign overlooking the highway. Yeah, it's crude toilet humour, but it also attacks American commercialism by showing how crass it can be. As a parody of the LA Riots, the ending of San Andreas was both breathtaking in that "Ken Levine inspired let the world tell the story" kind of way (entire city blocks were on fire and the previously mindless pedestrians suddenly became a vicious mob) and also heartbreaking. CJ gets his revenge... but he lost so much in the process. The fact that the riots were caused because an African American police officer was acquitted of his crimes raised issues of race that went beyond the simple black vs white dichotomy - something that would come up in real life when African American NYPD officers were acquitted of shooting an unarmed African American civilian.

But this post is about Grand Theft Auto IV. I honestly don't think I need to talk about the gameplay too much, but I'll go counter to the glowing reviews by suggesting that the shooting controls are average at best and the lack of checkpoints during those long arduous missions are still annoying, even with the quick retry button (mainly because you lose your body armor if you die). My biggest gameplay problem with the game is the fact that many of the missions are heavily scripted. Most of the storyline car chases are just that - chases. You can unload all your ammo into the enemy vehicle, but they won't die. Why? Because the chase is leading you to the next cutscene. One of the possible final missions, Out of Commission, is probably the most guilty of all of these missions. When you first catch up to Pegorino, you can't shoot him - he is invincible. When he's on his speedboat, you can't shoot him. When you are chasing him in an attack helicopter, you can't shoot him. It's only when your chopper is shot down and you land that you are able to chase Pegorino down and kill him. Clearly, this was so the player could experience the drama of the scripted chase - from foot, to bike, to helicopter, but for a game in a genre that is defined by its openness, this level was anything but.

But, let's go to the story. We've all read the rhetoric and in fact, N'Gai Croal justifies the use of such rhetoric by explaining why he needed to compare the game's story to The Sopranos. As engaging as I found some of the story to be, I don't think it comes close to the best of television or film. That mantle still goes to Bioshock. Why? Ultimately, the game's story is told through cutscenes and through conversations - this game's version of the "radio logs" found in Bioshock. Some of the environmental storytelling found in San Andreas - such as the SPRUNK sign and the city wide riots in which the entire city descends into chaos - is nowhere to be found in GTA IV. If anything, this game feels slightly regressive.

What is added however are branching story paths. You'll have a couple of opportunities to kill or release characters and at three points in the game, you'll have to choose to kill one of two people - the last choice deciding which ending you receive. While this is certainly an interesting mechanic, forcing players to make tough choices, it feels very much like a shallow version of the system perfected (perhaps too much) by BioWare. In the last few 1up.com podcasts, Shawn Elliot has expressed my concerns with the choices that the game offers. The problem is that throughout the rest of the game, you can essentially act like a sociopath. You might just shoot random people and police officers while driving around the city... not to mention the fact that you constantly commit the game's eponymous crime in order to get a car in the first place.
So, when you finally track down Darko - the man who betrayed Niko's military unit back in Europe - and you are offered the choice of executing him or letting him go, the consequences are fairly shallow. I chose to let Darko go and when I did and got into a car, Niko begins talking about the various emotions he is feeling at the moment. Anger, sadness, regret. But, the fact that I just stole a car a gun point in order to trigger the conversation makes it almost farcical. Niko believes that he might have changed after letting Darko go, but as a player, I just stole a car and killed countless innocent people before hand... not to mention the people I had to kill in order to progress the story in the first place.

This is a case where the choices you make are not only shallow, but the this is where the gameplay - dare I say the ludic experience - interferes or contradicts the narrative. The two simply do not mesh and the story becomes less than what it should be.

It was pointed out by John Davison on the May 9th episode of 1up Yours that this may be the first multi-million selling game that is a tragedy. Indeed, depending on your choices at the end of the game, either Roman or Kate will be killed. I don't know what happens in the ending where Roman dies - I haven't tried that ending yet, but in the ending where Kate dies and you kill Pegorino in revenge, that victory is hollow. After you shoot Pegorino, Roman enters the scene and tells Niko, "We won man, we won." Niko simply walks away as the camera pans to show the Statue of Happiness in all its satirical - and at this moment ironic - glory. Despite my problems with the narrative, I will readily admit that I was excited by the fact that the game truly is a tragedy in that traditional literary sense. Sure, Niko doesn't die, but at this point he might as well be dead. Of course, the fact that you go back on your merry way after the game ends ruins the weight of that tragic ending... but, I can forgive that since being able to play through the game after the story is over is a trademark of open world sandbox games.

Ultimately, I don't believe that Grand Theft Auto IV is the revolution that everyone in the game enthusiast industry and members of the mainstream press want it to be. Yes, the graphics and the representation of New York are fantastic... and the Euphoria physics engine looks like it will be the new "lens flare" and "bump mapping" of video game technologies. But from a storytelling perspective, it doesn't do anything new. If anything, it regressed and is lesser than San Andreas.

It was recently confirmed that Bioshock will be made into a movie and because of Ken Levine's method of storytelling through video games, I don't believe that there really is any interesting way for the film's producers to reproduce the game's story. At best, they'll have to focus on someone other than the player character. With Grand Theft Auto IV however, I believe that you could probably string all the cutscenes together and release that as a film. There's really nothing in the script or the game that can't just be lifted and made into a screenplay... and that's unfortunate.

I do have other issues with the story, but they are perhaps relatively minor when compared to what I've just discussed. For example, I believe the pacing is way off. This is a case of game designers believing that "longer is better" because the "hardcore" gamer wants 80 hours of gameplay. Unfortunately, the length leads to the gameplay being monotonous (it's a series of chases and shooting sequences) and the introduction of characters that ultimately lead nowhere. As amusing as people find Brucie and Bernie/Florian, they are characters that maybe could have been left out of the main story and made secondary.

The "revolutionary" choice system in this game is fairly shallow as well. What is lauded here is criticized in other games, namely the various Star Wars in which you make a choice the effects the outcome of the game. Most famously, Knights of the Old Republic featured a single choice where you could choose the "light side" or "dark side" ending, regardless of your decisions throughout the entire game. GTA IV does exactly the same thing and saving before you make this choice allows you to effectively watch and play through both endings.

There is also a problem with misogyny and perhaps homophobia. The women in the game are fairly shallow characters that stand only in the periphery. Michelle, Elizabeta and Kate are all ultimately background characters that do not matter. Yes, Michelle's betrayal ultimately leads Niko to find Darko and Kate's death leads Niko to seek revenge and feel the pathos of losing everything he has in America just as he has lost everything back in Europe, but they are mere plot devices and nothing more. The shallow dating game and the reference to "Hot Coffee" only show that they really haven't evolved that much from their previous efforts. The lap dance sequence at the strip club (complete with vibrating controller) only adds to the male-centered focus of the game. At least in this game, prostitution is not encouraged. As a gameplay mechanic, it's faster and cheaper to by food than it is to sleep with a prostitute. My only hope is that the Hausers will finally make a game that features a female lead. That will ultimately solve some of the problems with misogyny in the game. If anything, having a female character cruise around for male prostitutes will at least confound the Jack Thompsons of the world.

As for the homophobia, while Brucie may be an astute observation of closeted homosexuality, Bernie/Florian is essentially an effeminate male stereotype. The fact that he runs using the female running animation only compounds the use of that stereotype. Are there closeted men who need to assert their masculinity constantly? Hell, there are gay men who need to assert their masculinity constantly, so that's not an issue. Similarly, I do not deny that there are effeminate gay men either. But relying on these shallow stereotypes simply detracts from the more nuanced discussions of the immigrant experience and the themes of loyalty and identity. Although, I will admit, the fact that the game makes you execute a gay basher (Bernie/Florian's stalker) is clearly a standout mission. Given the many, many people on Xbox Live who casually toss the word "faggot" and "gay" around, I can only hope that mission made them realize their own homophobia.

I don't want to make it seem that I "hate" the game. At the very least the game forces people to think of these issues simply because of its popularity. Indeed, as shallow as the representation of some of the themes in the new Iron Man movie must be, the fact that it's out there and will be seen by millions of people is only a good thing. While I wish that more people would watch Standard Operating Procedure, I think that's simply a pipe dream. Indeed, a straight up game about the immigrant experience in America probably wouldn't sell well. But within the context of Grand Theft Auto? Suddenly millions of people are playing the immigrant experience for themselves and maybe, just maybe, they'll learn something from it.