Recently the videogame critiques set out to confirm suspicions that the fear of being crucified by fanboys have turned them into a bunch of cowardly, spineless jerks by awarding the latest release of a hardcore franchise a perfect score; Grand Theft Auto 4. In m…put away the guns people, this is not a negative review of the game. In fact, this isn’t even a review of GTA4 period. Even though I’ve played the game, my inability to finish it means it would be wrong of me to talk specifics. That said, I feel confident that my grasp of it is substantial enough (unless there is some third act big twist I haven’t come upon yet) to say: This is not a 10! ‘Best game since Ocarina of time’ (IGN)? No. Ocarina of time changed the landscape of what a popular adventure game should be. GTA4, at best, does a really good job at mowing the lawn.
My reaction to the GTA series is a perplexing one, even for me. I like the games, I buy the games but I find them a really, really big form of angry “…meh”. It’s a fantastic series with a great pedigree and most of the games are damn good or pretty decent, but it’s not something I’ve been able to obsess over. I know this is not something anyone should brag about but, without looking it up, I could probably explain to you how Arwen and Aragorn are practically cousins and recount year by year the life of Lord Voldemort so the fact that I remain un-grabbed enough to draft this piece with Wikipedia open in the other tab either says something about the franchise or me… most likely me.
The GTA franchise is historically note worthy. It is almost certainly the most consistently successful series to originate in the original Playstation era and this is because it relies on two fundamental hooks: one hook being a great historic move for the medium, the other…not so much.
Hook number one is that the series remains as the best example around of a ‘sandbox game’: a design style which allows the player to progress through the narrative at their own pace and navigate through a non-linear path. In other words, there is a goal but the method and speed you use to get there is entirely up to you. Hell, you don’t even have to finish the story to enjoy the game- if you want to just play a number of side missions or drive around digging the scenery… you can!
That scenery invariably is a stylised recreation of a well known American city, which is also invariably cartoonishly crime ridden in order to accommodate the protagonist who is always invariably a low level criminal striving to reach the top of the ‘bad-guys hierarchy’ by committing acts of violence, murder, aiding and abetting and the automotive felony in which the series is named.
This would be hook number two and it’s probably here where GTA tends to lose me. No, I’m not getting on my morally high horse and ranting about the amorality of the series. It’s a plain fact that criminals are conceptually fascinating and frequent icons of modern media- there is nothing wrong with making the lead guy a criminal. The problem is that I look on the series at a design standpoint and all I see is scads of potential being either ignored or pissed away in a liquid of dull, cliché settings and uninteresting heroes.
GTA3; the instalment which pretty much defined the series, was so different from its predecessors that it was forgivable that its plot was as unimaginative as the laziest, most formulaic crime thriller running on TV at 4 am and the subject matter (guns, drugs, ooh swear words!) were just a checklist of what 12 year old boys thought was cool. The follow up, Vice City, took place in a satirical imagining of 1980’s pop culture and showed signs that the developers had the means and desire to see their creation take off into some fantastical directions. Sadly, this was not to be; GTA San Andreas turned out to be the big, shining billboard showing that the series had no other intentions except to pander the obnoxious kids in its fan base. Gone is the humour and creative zany-ness of Vice City. Instead, San Andreas is built from the remains of the gangster rap culture- a sign that the developers realised that most of the fans were dumb, white, suburban 13 year olds who yank their boxers higher than their low jeans and ironically call each other the n word.
OK, this is getting too negative and it may just be that my seething dislike of San Andreas is down to my personal taste rather than a lack of innovation… but only slightly. It’s not because I find 1980’s Miami to be more interesting than 90’s LA (although I do), it’s more of a style. By wedding the outlandish fashion, music and pop culture of the period to a story of amoral criminality, Vice City worked as a satirical swipe against the Reagan era. San Andreas, although has the humour, does not do anything with the setting- it takes the gang scene at face value and wallows in it. No subtext and hardly any context.
The thing is GTA 4 is pretty much the same. It takes the clichéd views of the immigrant and current fear of terrorism and just rolls in it. Yet, GTA has to do this because it’s heavily chained to realism. No matter how cool this scenario would be, you’re never going to receive a mission to execute a gun launderer, but when you track him down and kick open the door you find yourself in the fucking Temple of Doom. As soon as you take the action out of a crime ridden city it won’t be Grand Theft Auto because you won’t be able to commit any acts of grand theft auto!
Once again, I’m not critiquing the game here, I’m just wondering how far the series can go in its present form. Even from my limited exposure to him, it seems as though Niko Bellic is the richest and deepest conceived version there can be of the lead protagonist of the GTA games. Can he be deeper and more interesting? Sure, but he would quickly reach a point where he would no longer be suitable as the leading role. And the developers? They can’t go redoing the series for the same reason. If you took a surgical saw to GTA and took out the trendy bullshit, the Scarface worship and maybe gave it a more exotic spin, added some interesting elements and beefed up the story mode would you end up with a better or at least more interesting game? Yeah…you’d end up with Shenmue.