The Rising Tide to New York City Did They Ride Into The Street

Send us your brightest, your smartest, your most intelligent,
Yearning to breathe free and submit to our authority,
Watch us trick them into wiping rich people's asses,
While we convince them it's a land of opportunity.

JULY IV
MDCCLXXVI

Engraving on the Statue of Happiness, GTAIV

GTAIV promotional image

Grand Theft Auto has always had a reputation for outlandishness. I remember the original game was passed around in early secondary school. Along with 18 rated horror films and porn magazines, a crude crime simulator appealed to young adolescent tendencies. When Vice City was released the series hit its high water mark. Whereas GTAIII was fairly subtle in betraying its influences, Vice City openly displayed its theme as a virtual 1980s night. The narrative pays notable homage to Scarface - which will forever cause me to wonder whether Scarface was popular in school before or after - and the setting is largely a visual pastiche of Miami Vice and the excesses of the mid 80s in general. Vice City's popularity may largely be down to its very clear identity. Its successor, San Andreas, was more down to earth in its core subject matter as opposed to the camp send-up of the 80s.

San Andreas was set in the early 90s black urban youth culture. Compared to the apparent cultural inauthenticity of the 80s; a depiction of poverty, gang violence, and racism is not easy material for parody. This is not to say San Andreas is a pure hard hitting social commentary. Carl Johnson's rise from exiled gang member to rich businessman and property owner in three cities is a fantastical portrayal of the American Dream and some sections of the narrative drift far from the core subject material as the game moves further from CJ's home - hinting at the existence of aliens in missions given by Mike Toreno and The Truth out in the desert of Bone County. However, San Andreas marked the point at which the satire of American society moved from the edges of the story and into closer focus. This is the reason the games are set in the United States and why GTA V was unlikely to ever be set anywhere else, even if there were indeed two London based expansion packs for the original GTA.

Although the satire had moved to the fore in the third era, the protagonist of each had been insiders - that is, they were American born. GTA IV delivered the only real progression that could be made in that exploration of America's triumphs and faults - an outsider. IV seems to lack the cinematic inspirations that formed the basis of each instalment in the third era. Instead the story flows from the historic status of New York as a immigration gateway uninhibited by the need to unfold according to a subject of homage or pastiche. We arrive in Liberty City with Niko Bellić aboard a ship approaching the Statue of Happiness (with her back turned to the world) overshadowed by nearby skyscrapers. Like the other games, Niko starts down on the rough streets; but whereas CJ's ascent allows him to right the wrongs that instigate his story, Niko doesn't get very far (except coming into possession of a penthouse apartment) and he ultimately acknowledges that his actions have inescapably made things worse for himself - subverting the usual vengeance storyline and opting for something closer to tragedy. The harsh pessimism espoused by Niko makes GTA IV a very weary game. Without the fantastical elements that previously defined the Grand Theft Auto series, romping through the virtual landscape accruing money and power and engaging in endless side quests, the turn toward more earnest storytelling goes some way to explaining the relative unpopularity of the fourth era.

GTA V looks set to continue down that path focusing on "the pursuit of the almighty dollar". So why has Rockstar steered their flagship title toward social commentary when an updated Carmageddon would sell better? When the visual style of Team Fortress 2 was first announced I recall one speculation that it was an attempt to avert depicting lethal violence with today's realistic graphics capabilities. After all the legal flak the series has taken, the tonal shift may be a response that these games are not just crime simulators - that they can communicate something about life just like a well written film, book or song.

···

For the record, I only briefly played Vice City when it came out. My first GTA game was San Andreas, and even then it was actually my brother's. He got it for his fourteenth birthday, so it was only right that I keep it from him for several months. I bought Vice City in the process of writing this, so alluring was the call of the 80s, but my heart still lies with that vast state on the West Coast. Driving around VC just feels so small.

Coda edit 12/07/12
[767]