An Analysis of Grand Theft Auto 4

Grand Theft Auto is a transcendent title a game so well known and so ingrained within the public's consciousness that people that don't even play games know about this title either because they've seen it played or they've seen it debated over in a courtroom there are few strangers to Grand Theft Auto for most it's a fun open-world sim that allows player freedom and a sandbox to run around and explode as much as you could explore unfortunately for others it's a running over hooker simulator that's corrupting young minds everywhere balancing this perception doesn't appear to be important to Rockstar at all instead they're much more concerned with doubling down on the absurdity on the violence on everything that has gotten them in trouble in the past to lewd and sexual let's double down on the strip clubs politicians angry about prostitutes and video games let's add more in more detail and give the player more options you see the thing about Grand Theft Auto is it's that it's not at all concerned with creating a piece of art like other games might be it knows what it is and it knows what it's capable of what then is GTA capable of it's capable of showing embracing and encouraging a side of humanity that is not missing in any of us an impulsive deadly side that is willing to do things just to see what happens it's capable of making a point without preaching it's absolutely political and how apolitical it is Grand Theft Auto is capable of a lot of things but maybe the most important thing is fun Rockstar Games approach to open-world design has profoundly shaped the way developers have gone about open worlds particularly with the three-dimensional titles Rockstar has continued to adjust and perfect a game design philosophy that really began to take shape with the release of Grand Theft Auto 3 fast forward to the advent of new hardware and Rockstar was gearing up for their most ambitious title yet their design goal was to create the sort of open-world that works in almost every single way in size polish gameplay and character the hardware of the ps3 and xbox 360 allowed them to do exactly that GTA 4 was released to extraordinary critical success its Metacritic score is the third highest of all video games ever the game was massively popular from as well solidifying rock star is a perennial all-star in terms of video game developers because of the new hardware rockstar was able to do things with an open world the other games at the time had never been able to whether that resulted in depth or breadth is something we will cover over the course of this analysis we will identify the rhetoric of the game its role in a wider cultural context and how the game dealt with its shadow of controversy furthermore we will look at its narrative and character both the city and its inhabitants we will look at the pacing of its story missions and how the game deals with the massive dissonance that exists between the player and its characters in addition we will look at its gameplay and how it can sometimes act as a vehicle for emphasizing the previous two readings of the game what a grand theft auto do well in terms of its playability where did it fail miserably why do you have to pay tolls how have video games changed as a result of this game there's so much to unpack here so get comfortable this is going to sound unlike me but I'm not going to cover the story in this title much of course I will mention parts but I won't summarize it or critique it much there's just so much the game has a massive pacing issue and it carries through its third act far too long than it needs to do to the mission structure of the game there's really no easy way to cover a story like this in any sort of timely manner please understand that if you feel it truly necessary you can read a synopsis on Wikipedia chances are you've played the game anyway across this video series I hope to map out the design philosophies and successes of rockstars for most contemporary releases Grand Theft Auto for Red Dead Redemption LA noire and Grand Theft Auto 5 the reason I picked these titles is because I believe there is an identifiable chasm between GTA 4 and the releases prior to it including bully we'll go in depth with this of course but I simply think GTA 4 is a good lift off point for doing a series retrospective like this there will be story elements spoken almost immediately and throughout so this is your spoiler warning although I imagine you've played the game before I played this title for 30 hours on the PC the cutscenes would glitch a lot so if the cinematics look weird that is why don't let the lengths feel daunting - there are time stamps in the description and it might be better to take the video in chunks if you're new to this channel I normally am much more interested in the thematic and philosophical elements of video games over the gameplay and story that being said we are going to cover all of it so I hope you enjoy this is chapter 1 of the book of contemporary Rockstar video games let's head to Liberty City [Music] Grand Theft Auto 4 is a third-person open-world game that has you playing as niko bellic in Eastern European with a checkered past who is looking to America for a new start in the American Dream the game was developed by Rockstar Games in April of 2008 to understand Rockstar Games is to understand one of the foundations of media satire I think before any words can be spoken in terms of video game design it is absolutely necessary to understand that this world this game this virtual reality is absolutely a form of rhetoric or argument it is teeming with social commentary bursting at the seams with politics it might be one of the few games to grasp this illusive ludonarrative dissonance and actually control it positively gta4 is embedding to be understood in red is some political think piece however it is very self-aware a trait that actually lends itself to creating a more successful social commentary given the medium let's unpack that a little bit Grand Theft Auto knows it's not literature it knows the limits of its ideological jurisdiction it's not going to be occupying the minds of philosophers all over the world so it chooses to satirize these irreverent and political subjects with the same sort of irreverence and lack of tact I actually want to go back and change something I said Grand Theft Auto isn't a social commentary it's more of a social vandalism a crude exaggerated message strewn across an otherwise beautiful image it's a loud aggressive and taboo attempt at making a statement vandalism doesn't have to be bad in the broader picture of the world there are brilliant lessons to be learned from vandals grand theft auto works and it wouldn't work if it were a social commentary it needs to be loud and it needs to be apparent and obvious dr. Seuss is a social commentary it's a children's story masked in an easy-to-understand metaphor grand theft auto is a social vandalism it's not trying to mask anything its aggressive and in-your-face just like it should be I think the most common example of this is the radio because you spend a lot of time in your car you're almost always inundated with the culture of the world materialism perversion greed and ignorance it's always in your head sure you can turn it off but the interesting design decision is that you only turn off the radio in that car as opposed to flipping a setting in the options menu given how much you're jumping in and out of cars the radios message is as oppressive as any other form of advertising something that developers were very careful about making sure of the station's themselves of course are wrought with satire again we have to remember this isn't careful satire this is as clear as clear can be I mean is there any more blatant example of this then America's next top hooker a reality TV show that is just what America's Next Top Model would be if we all just evolved to our most perverted level you get in trouble for hanging outside a woman's clinic now to cruise on chicks you get in trouble for that what happened to freedom in this city you know I mean the mayor's shutting down the porn stores you know banning smoking and trying to turn outlaw fun but there's more places you can go then you can find some some more places to define limits I think that's what makes the satire of GTA work it's not so unrealistic and aggressive that it's just perverse for the sake of being perverse it's believable not necessarily that it could happen in today's world but that it could happen in an alternate reality that unshackles the sort of moralities and social taboos of the world in that sense it's deeply cynical and sad it's sad that is not hard to imagine millions being captivated by the show America's next top hooker and if you doubt that you have far too confident of a perspective of the common man the satire is a part of the world building and it's emphasized even further by its main character Niko Bellic who comes from the Balkan states a place so ravaged by war and poverty that the worries of its inhabitants are so much more revolving around life and death rather than materialistic desires the contrast increases the context here and players are forced to think about where the priorities are held more on Niko later it's so cool to me what Rockstar was able to accomplish with their advertising think of it this way what is your relationship with advertising in real life it's normally in passing rarely will you focus on an advertisement on purpose as you speed down a highway or watch television or YouTube yeah parents are usually lurking very low in your mind dead air that fires off the same neural nodes as the sound of your refrigerator that is to say you pay very little attention yet somehow they work they still infiltrate your mind albeit slowly of course you don't realize that the invasion force is effective but it is I think a common misconception with advertising is its immediate goal when you see a commercial for McDonald's it's not necessarily meant to make you jump off your couch and say I need McDonald's right now no it's meant to be that two days from then when you're talking about where to eat McDonald's is at the top of your head it's a slow burn a little ideological ninja that infiltrates your brain and sits there until its mission starts this is why corporations pay so much money in order to advertise it's how youtubers are able to make videos for a living companies are in a constant arms race to occupy the minds of the people obviously some companies do this better than others so how does Rockstar use this to their advantage well the same way advertisers do in real life it's constant it's pervasive in every way every billboard every taxi and commercial commit to creating and enforcing the culture of the world it's a really cool vehicle for expressing themes and I don't know if there's anything else like it in videogames rock stars commitment to world building through advertisement is something special for sure again though it's not drawing necessarily attention to itself either sure it tries just like any other advertisement would in the real world but your brain responds in the same way - it Tunes it out you drive by the billboards at breakneck speeds yet just like the real world they still infiltrate your mind the themes of world are slowly but surely making their way into your consciousness that it's absolutely a main factor - how Rockstar makes sure their open worlds feel real it's not with a bang but with a tiny ideological ninja planted into the consciousness I think that the game tends to deal with a number of these themes but I think one of the most important ones is simply what it means to be American not necessarily what it actually means but instead what the most stretched out stereotypical American ideas that the outside world tends to think Americans as I've gotten some pushback for mixing politics and videogames but I don't know how you can look at a game like Grand Theft Auto and not consider its politics again I think this is all but a bit of a misnomer I don't even know if I'm happy saying it's politics because I don't really know if the game is politicking anything sure it's satirizing materialism and American greed and perversion but is that really politics or is it just the social vandalism we spoke about earlier the game approaches politics and it's stories and advertising but I don't know if it's really pushing one side or another although it may not seem that way right away you see the game makes fun of these sort of libertarian Alex Jones s conservative radio shows by giving the airwaves to the most loudmouth dudes shouting about our freedoms being taken away the politics within Liberty City are widely anti-establishment conservatives screaming about cliche hot-button issues in that sense I guess the developers could be pushing some liberal agenda the thing is though I think it's saying far more about the American Dream in the image of America to everyone that isn't currently living within its boundaries this is absolutely one of the most important things to consider when analyzing grand theft auto for well really all rockstar games as we'll learn you see the American Dream is one of those enormous lis overanalyzed and mis credited ideas and media that just seems to be able to fit into any piece of Arts theme the American dream is to literature analysts as phallic symbols were to Freud it's everywhere everything has to do with it nothing is untouched by the wide grasp of Western cultural imperialism I think one of the easiest ways to condense it is by saying that the American Dream is the amalgamation of individual freedom and comeuppance democracy in a white picket fence you know like raising yourself up by your bootstraps I think it's the idea that all who come here have the same opportunity as anyone else regardless of where they come from or who they are and I think at its core this is what gta4 is really tackling here I know I just criticized this kind of thinking but in any analysis of individual satires within the game can usually be analyzed back towards the idea of what America truly represents as well as the American dream it says here's what we look like to those who didn't grow up here this is us there are different lens of course this is why Nico Bellic is the most important and necessary part of the entire game the character you play as is as new to this country as anyone else it's why they emphasized so early on your cousin Romans ludicrous stories of wealth and excitement it's why you were reminded that even in Niko's home the only TV they had was still American television as much as GTA 4 is a story of betrayal and crime and drama and loyalty it is in broader terms the story of the disillusionment of an American newcomer an odyssey through disappointment and depression through hopes and dreams being run over by a Hummer with an American flag plastered on it and if I may and if you choose to indulge me what you obviously have if you made it this far I'd like to express what I think is so brilliant about niko bellic as a video game character before I start let me remind you that for video game analysis for me is fun I understand when I say this stuff about BJ Blazkowicz being this ideological image of Yaya blah blah and reality it's probably just that the developers of Wolfenstein made a really buff why dude and this may Saturn some but this is just true video games are in their infancy they're young and crude that being said I learned very early on in my time analyzing literature and film that is nothing is an accident if it made it into the film it was thought about by the artists mainly though it's just kind of fun okay Liberty City is New York City now I know Liberty City is supposed to be and look like an act like New York City but just bear with me here Liberty City is what New York City looks like through the eyes of someone who has never been to America Liberty City to Nikko is the way it is because it is so tremendously radical so aggressively American that it appears to him as it over-the-top Liberty nightmare to phrase this differently I'm almost saying that to those who live in Liberty City who have lived in America all of their lives Liberty City just looks like New York City but through the lens of Nikko through the lens of someone who has only heard about the promises of the American dream he sees Liberty City just a name alone makes sense this context it's literally defined by the most American of terms Liberty it's really an interesting perspective on how we should view well perspective sure with the first-person shooter it's not hard to imagine that what you are viewing it's happening through the eyes of your character with a third-person title like Grand Theft Auto however it's a bit more complicated are you watching Niko Bellic through his adventure just a couple of metres behind them at all times are you the puppeteer I think in the case of grand theft auto 4 the developers wanted you at all times to be seeing the city through the eyes of Niko Bellic they want you to apply your own experiences and ideas sure but ultimately the thematic design of the city is the most effective when seen through an outsider I also believe that Niko's excellence is pushed forward quite a bit by the voice performance of Michael Holick as a general rule I don't believe the writing in grand theft auto 4 is great I think it's serviceable but lacks a lot of memorable charm that can be found most other places in the game Michael Holick however as niko bellic takes uninspired writing and makes it feel visceral I absolutely love the battle-cries that you get during combat when read from a script they sound generic and uninspired when you hear them scream from an angry Slavic man after slaughtering the men who kidnapped your cousin well you feel a little glad that niko is a fictional character that you will never have any chance of meeting in real life and as i analyzed some of his voice work i'm realizing that he absolutely may be missing some of the mark in terms of naeli and Eastern European accent exactly what he lacks in precision he more than makes up for in memorable anger there's a noticeable texture to his voice a deep-seated psychopathy that innocence begins to justify some of his murderous ways it's not exactly the accuracy of his voice but the ferocity it's almost like the game itself as we've learned it's not clean or perfect its aggressive in Rusty it doesn't care what you think it just wants to make a point oh boy here we go here he goes with another one of his character analysis you know what David maybe the developers just wanted you to kill a bunch of people quit thinking so hard about it well maybe but maybe not look there's a serious underlying PTSD a narrative here I'm not going to go into this deeply and say that the whole game is a PTSD narrative like something like SpecOps of the line but you can't deny that Nikko has a very different side to him when the bullets start flying eco is a measured person most of the time he is calm when dealing with criminals especially I think Rockstar was a little scared when they started creating Nikko and the narrative around him I think they thought to themselves how do we reconcile the fact that our character is so measured in calm and he's genuinely going to Liberty City to start anew but you can begin running over characters in the streets the second you get into your first car you know it's the classic ludonarrative dissonance problem a problem that I'm sure 80% of you are sick of hearing about but for the sake of the 20% uninitiated I will say this ludonarrative dissonance refers to the difference in motivation between you the player and the character you are playing as I firmly believe there won't be a better example of this than Bethesda's fallout for an open-world sandbox that literally starts the game out by killing your wife in front of you and then having this person steal your son oh yeah then giving you an open-world to do anything in any father would be sprinting towards whatever scent they can get on finding revenge and finding his or her son but after we build a couple settlements and play hero is the silver shroud you know do you get the point there's a disconnect between what you want to do and what the character in the game wants to do that is ludonarrative dissonance Rockstar actually makes an effort here and I think when you view it through this lens it actually gives a lot of context for a lot in the game the otherwise lacks any context Nikko seems to love the killing at least he loves it in the sense that he loves killing in the way that heroin addicts love heroin he may not think it's a great idea when he is sober but man when he is getting ready to shoot up it's like a sudden euphoria for him a blinding light that carries him away to a place that isn't anything resembling his former self his screams of inebriated power a seemingly immortal presence carry through into the players ears giving a bit of context as to why he may spend his afternoons getting down civilians now there's a lot of readings as to why the most common reaction to starting a grand theft auto game is to mow down innocents this is a reading as to how the developers could reconcile this knowledge it's not perfect but I would encourage you to think of it the next time you play this game I also understand that this reading doesn't exactly apply to other open-world games that give you the same options including ones created by Rockstar now it is hard to deny that practically any behavior considering Nico's war plague to murder prevalent background it's plausible within Nico's brain the game isn't toying with realism but within the twits of odds that the game sets up for itself anything you could do as a player can be justified with in the game as Nico's hasty departure for mental stability as if the balkan wars are coming back to say hello right and Nico's noggin in one of the conversations with Michelle Niko says that his experiences in war literally ruined him it's very possible that Niko believes that he has no other reality he is too prideful to kill himself and so he figures there is no other way you could possibly live thus he intends on living this violent one until one too many bullets find him now Niko can also be vulnerable one of the things you will notice throughout the story is that he had this unbreakable bond with his cousin Roman a character that only is kept around because of the ties that bind family now let me phrase it this way if Roman was not blood-related Niko would have no reason to keep him around he lies to him Gamble's away all of his hard-earned money and is caught up with a group of loan sharks the entire first act of the video game consists of you bailing him out and also you making things worse and it attempt to help him Niko has this unapologetic desire to protect and help Roman it's just more depth to the character of Niko are you not paying close attention you would think that money is the only motivator for him he is constantly saying that if it pays he will do it it's like he wears this facade of this ruthless pragmatist but in reality he can't keep up the ruthless face when it comes to his family in this way he actually reminds me of another sort of great male power fantasy characters in television take Walter White for example a man who tried so desperately hard to become this ruthless drug kingpin and while succeeding in so many different things he was never able to break away from the ties of family and that includes Jesse what I'm saying is this if Walter White was truly this ruthless egman tist the soleus money love in kingpin then he would have killed Jesse for many things across that show he wouldn't have cared so much about keeping Skyler and Flint in his life and that is precisely why the character was so interesting and in-depth you could see this massive hole in his facade the fatal flaw that prevents him from becoming truly evil there's no way to tell if Nicole or Walter would just be perfectly successful if they cut even the most strong of ties but their inability to disconnect from family certainly puts them in trouble at some points I love this about Nico I love that I can see something in him that is more important to him than money or murder I love that the man who screams I will tear your heart out while gunning down police officers is also so unable to just say for himself Roman isn't good for me and I am NOT good for Roman it's not inconsistent writing it's brilliant because the writers specifically draws attention to the importance of this theme of family by making it an inconsistent part of Nico's motivations in that sense Roman is the linchpin to giving Nico depth without Roman Nico is a mass murdering vengeful bloodthirsty money-grubber who is entirely self-serving with Roman Nico is a mass murdering vengeful bloodthirsty money-grubber who is entirely self-serving except when it comes to well Roman you see it has to be family not just friendship or connection you are loyal to the friends you make throughout the way but almost every single one of those friends are just vehicles in which you can make money through by way of missions even your two romantic interests aren't even in the same category - Nico as Roman is the first thing one you can all but ignore throughout the entire game and crucially choose Roman over in one of the first missions in the second being someone the Nico even alludes to considering making her family by way of marriage that girl is Kate McCreary a character that at the end of the game you have the choice to leave there follow her advice which Nico begrudgingly asks for or follow Romans advice you see even when Roman is giving you the advice to put aside your pride inventive ways Nico still has a hard time not doing exactly that and instead you were given a choice if you watch Nico go throughout his journey he is always talking about revenge and killing Dmitry for what he did throughout hours and hours of planning Roman simply says that maybe that's not a good idea and Nico considers that idea he is so clearly malleable to Roman in a way that he is malleable to no one else however normally with Roman there is no choice you are placed right into a quest in order to bail Roman out no matter what you were doing previously it doesn't matter what some of your other friends have to say you are loyal to money more so than them but not so with Roman who shows maybe my favorite part of Nico's character hidden vulnerability when you're analyzing a game like grand theft auto and its themes you have to understand that most of them can come back to that idea of what it means to be an American see if I had to list out the themes of the game it would go something like this greed materialism violence and a superfluous approach to almost everything these can almost all be brought back to an outsider's approach to Americans what else does the game tackle outside of this reading one of the main reoccurring themes is loyalty or maybe betrayal depending on how pessimistic you're feeling that day there are times when you feel that Nico might be the only oil one in the entire game granted sometimes loyalty is not possible like when the game gives you the option to kill one or the other of two quest givers still even then you may just be being loyal to someone that you choose your Irish comrade and crime packin McCreary is pretty loyal he's also one of my favorite characters and his drive to be a good cook is what I love about him he's not evil he's just efficient he wants the job done and he wants to do without any of his friends dying he really is a good reflection of Nico in that way sure there mass-murdering crime lords but they're also loyal even then it might not be loyalty and instead it might have to be betrayal based on the motivation for the entire journey for Nico his main reason for hopping on the boat besides that of Romans crazy stories is to find someone in a war in its homeland he was with a squad of a number of his closest friends you only hear about this in speech you never able to see any of it all but three of his group were killed because someone in the group betrayed him and gave information to the enemy he intends to find both in order to find out who it was and killed him you see but Nico would never tell you this Nico constantly acts like his main motivation is money I actually think this is one of most interesting thematic readings of the game because it actually doesn't make sense within a gameplay perspective let me explain I've played through this game a number of times in each time I'm nearing the end of the game I have such an abundance of cash that there just isn't enough things in the world I could buy yet Nico still does these missions when these dirty jobs for all of these monsters on the one hand it could be the developer not balancing the income well enough but on the other hand it could be just that Nico knows nothing else that he says he needs the money but he really just likes the killing the thing is he's just using the money as a vehicle to get to his betrayer once he meets one of the possibly trayers and learns he has nothing to do with it he then lets him live after meeting the guy that actually admits to doing the betraying you're still given the option to let him live or die okay to tie this knot off of the topic of loyalty versus betrayal I think the whole thing is pretty succinctly tied up in your last encounter with the man who betrayed you back in the war you asked why he did it it's pretty powerful just watch strange toy season how much you'll kill my friends for $1,000 how much do you charge to kill someone you ruined me your [ __ ] I think and from you have [ __ ] junkie tell me Dan he did it for the money he did it for money he's not American he's not from livery city maybe just maybe even the theme of betrayal goes back to the theme of greed as well maybe just maybe Grand Theft Auto is making a statement here more about humanity rather than the American stereotype as you're surrounded by corporate greed and individual greed and people willing to do anything for a quick Brook including CEOs and police chief's you are constantly reminded and told that this is the American Dream this is what America is like this is what Liberty will get you but then at the end as the game makes a big deal about having to ship this guy from Europe all the way to America you learn he did something so dastardly for a measly amount of cash it's sickening and it might just be human something knows what you come on I think above all that might just be what we can learn most from our somatic exploration of this game I mean the game itself might reveal more about us than any other game you see I just wrote this line and that said we are deeply violent people but I don't even think I agree with that I think we are deeply curious people and I think it's dangerous to imply that what we are doing on screen in a completely virtual world without consequence says anything about our relationship with violence I don't think grand theft auto shows that we are a violent people I think it shows that we are curious people and the people that are capable of moral triage we are capable of understanding the goods and the bads of what the characters are doing we are capable of performing the mental gymnastics to say I can simultaneously enjoy killing innocents in this game and also recognize that I have no desire to do that in real life that ladies and gentlemen is what old legislators are missing about the game it's not about seeing what we can do it's about pushing the limits as far as we can a sort of challenge to the developers to say what did you account for it's why we shoot water to see if there's a splash it's why we try and interact with toilets to see if there's an option to use toilet we've all done it there's some people that have never played a video game before and if you give them the controller and place them in down down Liberty City inside of a car I would bet my bottom dollar most of them would be running over people within a couple of minutes of figuring out the controls it's what we do it's human and I think it's necessary if someone is comfortable accepting this and making a fun experience so for that I appreciate Rockstar so I guess as we near the end of analyzing all these possible readings of the game we may not be in any more agreement than we were at the start of the video I hope we are of course but Grand Theft Auto 4 isn't trying to convince you of some moral argument so I guess neither am i the best we can do is understand that well yes GTA 4 is absolutely a satire of American values and stereotypes it might also be saying a lot more about people in general a lot more of which is revealed in the games gameplay [Music] typically games will do one or two things when it comes to player and character motivation I touched on this in almost every one of my videos but the synchronicity between what the player is doing and what the character is doing is very important a game might have you inhabit a character that the writers have given a name backstory and motivation to and you just control his body when you can but mainly watch a story unfold like a movie this is like uncharted Nathan Drake really the only thing separating the Uncharted games from being movies are the times in between cutscenes that have you playing lachrymal with enemies alternatively you could inhabit a vessel a much more nebulous character designed so that you can project yourself and your motivations on to the character as if to say this is what I would do if I were in this situation I think gta4 interestingly might just break the good dichotomy here at least in a sense you see Niko has his own backstory and motivations sure but at its core E is still a deeply violent man it's as if the developers are saying we don't need to give you a vessel because we know exactly what you will be using this vessel for killing so let's make a compelling character here and your ability to project yourself onto them will only encourage you to relate with them further in that sense Niko is both a predefined character and a blank slate intended for you to project yourself on or at least project your car into crowds of people accepting this is one of the most important first steps in understanding Grand Theft Auto this gameplay the game itself at its core is an open-world power fantasy a place for you to get your rocks off plastic there's mini-me bags as possible when you're examining a game like Grand Theft Auto in its gameplay however you really have to index it out into easy to digest chunks it's such a robust game I like robust here it's not deep it's certainly not narrative ly complicated what it is though is effectively crammed full of little innuendos and side activities both significant and insignificant there is such an extraordinary amount of things to do here and it's not like a Ubisoft game let me explain Ubisoft has a real need to have you complete objectives check this lists off can collect this object do this thing many times uses this to inflate the open world make you feel like there's more to do than there really is an assassin's creed there may be races or assassin's missions or feathers to collect or thieves missions or I could go on forever as video game donkey said better than I ever could there's not 90 missions there is the same three missions 30 times each but still you do them and I like doing them sometimes I think it's kind of fun to do repetitive checklist material with Grand Theft Auto however it's different there's still an enormous amount of things to do but really the game is only concerned with forcing you to do the main story missions there's not the same sort of aggressive reminding that goes on in other games you see a common endorsement of Grand Theft Auto games comes with this normally it feels like real life well this kind of thing normally annoys me as games have a long way to go before we consider them like real-life GTA's wealth of activities actually contributes to this more than any other game I've played we touched on this a bit with the advertising hata and how that contributes to making it feel real but what else does the game do well there's your story missions icons scattered throughout the world that usually begin with a cutscene have a combat filled middle and then end with a cutscene they are almost disconnected from the world in the free roam mode of the game and while there is not an identified free roam mode we are going to call anytime you are not participating in a story mission free roam I had written a good bit of this video explaining the gameplay loop of Grand Theft Auto but if you found this video there's no way you don't know basically you are either participating in an objective oriented mission or you are driving walking or flying around Liberty City doing whatever you want you can call your friend to go bowling you can run over pedestrians you can go on a helicopter tour you can go home and watch TV you can go to an internet cafe organize a date with a man or a woman on a dating site meet them and take them home safely or brutally murder them I'm telling you the best way to make your world feel like it could be real is giving the player options outside of traditional gaming opportunities the fact I can go home and watch television on my couch serves absolutely no purpose within the narrative but it actually made me feel very involved in the world you see grand theft auto walks this type rope of giant organic open-world sandbox as well as a narrative Lee driven cinematic storytelling medium this accomplishment on rockstars part should not be without accolade as it manages to do both in most games do one the dichotomy is something I think is deeply synonymous with Rockstar Games at this point no other developer does it better there are better linear narrative titles and there might be better open-world titles they're not better a linear open-world narrative titles wow it doesn't come without its problems either you know I would be open to suggesting that it's not unrealistic that one could just really not like Rockstar Games first off the pacing of the story is completely off well there is no pacing most of the time you have three or four quest givers at a time waiting no matter what for you to walk into their little yellow arrow to start their mission you can do them in your own order for the most part and you can do them at whatever time you want you could spend 10 gameplay hours doing random stuff before you proceed with your next story mission resulting in you forgetting everything you did before and all the momentum the story has created alternatively you can do the opposite which is something I found myself doing suddenly the open-world wasn't a character for me anymore it wasn't beautiful and thematic and a vehicle for the story it was an annoyance a barrier between me and the next mission an extremely large mission select screen that had me playing a driving minigame between each mission I would just do one mission after another driving from one to the other on complete auto-pilot you know you have truly fallen victim to this when you start grabbing a taxi right after your mission ends and taking it straight to the next mission skipping the ride altogether it is interesting to me if I may go off script in not professional here a bit that the game has the story of sort of an accessory to the real draw here which is the sandbox from a purely game design standpoint it makes me wonder if the missions were even necessary or maybe if the implementation of the mission was necessary I mean can you imagine a rockstar open-world that doesn't have a story if you create a character maybe there are emergent stories maybe there are missions more ingrained in the world though rather than the icons on a map am i explaining GTA online this isn't like a goof I haven't actually played it it sounds awesome if that's the case the point I'm making is that it's not hard for me to imagine a rockstar game without the mission structure it currently as it currently stands in GTA 4 there's not at all enough content to justify stripping the main story out completely but again my gut feeling that it's too speculative to really script out is that Rockstar felt that they had to have deep mission stories it's why most of them devolve into go here and kill these guys it's the continued problem video games having this fetishistic desire to be recognized as movies that they have to have stories to tell well I think the story at least the characters of the game are good it doesn't make me question what could have been a possible with within the world if Rockstar committed to making the gameplay the story I don't think the gameplay needed the story I guess I wonder if there is a reality out there that consists of a game so confident in its ability to immerse you in a world it doesn't actually need you to have to check off missions take for example the gameplay elements of the friendships if you do enough quest for someone they will eventually be considered your friend and you can call them on your phone to do activities I think this is sort of an awesome way of making the game play the story what do you learn about yourself while doing this how do you impart yourself onto Niko when Roman calls you asking to bowl and you say no that you saying the story is nothing for me I don't care about your feelings please stop calling me cousin how differently would you feel if the game didn't force you to do these missions or meet these people but instead you did so in a more organic way it's interesting stuff I tell you I usually try to avoid doing this stream-of-consciousness style of commentary here but these are some deep questions of game design I'm not so sure I know the answer to so I won't act like I do I'd like to talk in depth about some of the other gameplay elements here more so to do with the actual kinetics of the game first I don't know if I will ever understand the whole tap the a button to run faster thing there are three ways of moving in GTA walking by pushing forward the stick running by holding down a and pushing forward the stick and a sort of sprint made possible by tapping a repeatedly and moving forward the stick I guess my main thing is I don't know why you couldn't just make Niko sprint by pressing and holding the a button and before you tell me it's it's connecting the player in Niko you're supposed to feel the exertion he is well I guess I can sympathize with this but not really I mean I make some pretty excruciating reaches in terms of video game philosophy see but the thing about this one is it's not consistent with anything else in the game it's just annoying it's not contributing what you think it does I mean if you think that I would ask how many times you have earth ever thought that maniacally smashing the a button is any way contributing to making the gameplay feel more real sometimes when I play these games I feel like I'm missing something as to why I have to do that to sprint but who knows I might be complaining too much here's honestly not that big of a deal I think as far as the combat goes and Nico's moveset I'm going to try and be a little more understanding of the controls and the responsiveness this is a retrospective not a review so I have to say that I think cover mechanics have improved a lot over the years and that this game is a bit behind the times now Nico's ability to snap on the walls is inconsistent and best and the way that the game handles his acceleration is also really frustrating sometimes Nico will flawlessly move from cover into a brisk walk and sometimes he is unable to move at all the shooting isn't great either and no I'm not talking about the issue with the auto aim that is synonymous with Rockstar titles I'm taking issue with the responsiveness of the controls again it's very possible that this is a problem with the buggy PC port when I wish to fire my gun out of cover they can sometimes be up to a two second delay before Nico actually fires his weapon it's infuriating and it's symptomatic of a wider problem of unresponsive gameplay furthermore I will never quite understand why the developers put so many options in the game for hand-to-hand combat I mean it's good I mean more options and abilities are good but it besides one mission towards the beginning of the game there's hardly ever a use for it again you aren't going to want to do it in any of the story missions and a lot of the people you can go up to and punch why the run away or pull out a pistol and sar shooting you there's a lot of potential here and it seems squandered I love how when you shoot someone their body tends to move realistically according to the shot if you shoot them in the shoulder they will spin around and collide with the wall fire at their legs and they will fall to the ground and attempt to crawl away this was something a developers still struggle with even today and props to Rockstar for doing it well unfortunately this just could have been a lot more excellent had it been in a different game there just isn't much variety in combat here most enemies will be easy to take down gun wielding people with a few exceptions of done wielding people with body armor most weapons of years are little and there's really rarely a reason to use anything other than the assault rifle which is a big problem to me enemy variety is the big issue here though I'm not asking for like zombies or monsters or something but there's some ways that you could spice up the combat first would be strict enemy variety which is to say add more types of combatants crazed drug addicts that run you down and use the Molotov cocktails to flush you out weapon that you can use but no enemies do how about snipers that take cover on rooftops that could have been an excellent addition to the police chases may be included around the star for military fortifications such as guard towers or makeshift roadblocks with sandbags and tool boxes could have been a cool climax for a fully start out Nikko even like Goliath type enemies that could walk slowly but tank damage could have been a cool way to change up the combat what the combat always devolves to is virtual whack-a-mole fighting non mobile enemies I don't know maybe guard dogs with tanks I'll stop there's a lot of driving in this game maybe more driving than on foot action depending on what you do I think that over the years that this game has been out the driving has been a hot topic of discussion I tend to fall on the positive side of this debate the problem people have is how weighty the cars feel this is to say that a junker or a big truck tend to take turns and accelerate very poorly they also really skid the back tires against the pavement which makes maneuvering around the tight angles of a metropolitan city very difficult I think in future titles that seemed less of an issue because of how open the world road design is in GTA 4 there are few open areas for just pedal-to-the-metal driving especially in Liberty cities version of Manhattan the motorcycles might be the worst part to me especially in the lost and the damned DLC again I just feel like this has to be a problem with the PC port there's no way that there can be any other way it's terrible it's as if someone coded the back tire and butter and the floor is hardwood any turn will send you into a tailspin the last time I played GTA 4 seriously was when it came out nine years ago on the Xbox 360 and I remember enjoying the motorcycles I don't own a console the game is on otherwise I would look for myself also this is kind of weird but indulge me again I like the toll roads in the game you can do a lot of things in gta4 that won't get you pulled over or in trouble you can speed by police officers caused a ruckus take down a light pole fling yourself off a ramp for at high speeds just a bunch of debauchery but if you neglect to pay the city $5 oh boy you really goofed up it reinforces the priorities of the city especially that theme of greed I guess above all the nuance of GTA 4 is game play isn't really where it shines it's more and how it puts you in a place that you can create as much havoc as possible as I revisit all of these Rockstar titles I do hope that a lot of the games issues I had gameplay wise are fixed but none of them were so bad that it made me think this is ruining an otherwise great game I absolutely think GTA's game plays holistically good as if all of the elements come together to create a unique experience [Music] Grand Theft Auto released two separate single-player DLCs the first being titled the lost and the damned and the second being titled The Ballad of Gay Tony I think these two DLCs do exactly what expansion content should do which is addressed parts of the original game that might not have been fully fleshed out and experiment with the different ideas that the developers wanted not exactly what the publisher wanted you can tell this happens in a lot of DLCs the Wasson the Damned is mainly plagued by the motorcycle issues I mentioned above again as I played through this I thought there was no way that something like this couldn't be a bug I could not take turns to save my life the entire story is essentially about two rival biker gangs so there are motorcycles galore at its core though the DLC is a character study an exploration of values and what it means to be the family in a lot of ways it further encourages players to think about all the different things we talked about earlier primarily family in the American Dream it asked questions such as what does it mean to be in the family where does friendship and business collide when you live a life such as these men do what is even the point of future-proofing why not party drink and fornicate until you wither and die each character in the game resides in such a strict ideological corner that most of the conflict of the game boils down to each of their Philips philosophies being challenged by each other for example the character you play as Johnny is quite the pragmatic thinker who is always looking at the business and future of the club your president and old friend Billy gray is far more reckless and pretty much use rationality in the same way that he used the rival biker gang the Angels of Death which is to say he hates it I like how the story builds on the themes of the vanilla game in smart ways and also lends credence to the reading that maybe Rockstar isn't making claims about any one person but instead Humanity of the whole you end up taking down into batting with high-ranking government individuals to drunky jug addicts all of them are equally as greedy and scummy all of them laugh at stupid jokes and all of them end up being gunned down in the same way this really is a story about class and how it doesn't matter where you fall in that spectrum you still make stupid mistakes one of the cool things they do here is intertwine the two DLCs with the vanilla game they do it in small ways by showing Nikko walking around in the cutscenes but also in bigger ways during the main game you actually do interact with the two main playable characters in the DLC but they aren't given much attention you don't know they're going to be future playable characters essentially the three all interact through the wider story of the diamonds it makes playing through the vanilla game a lot more interesting because you know how it all sort of ties together I don't know why more video game developers don't take this sort of approach with single-player expansion content anymore I imagine it it's almost entirely financially dependent which is to say that it just doesn't make as much sense to put so much resources into creating something that like that when you can sell micro content for so much more without the manpower it is cool to see developers have fun with their content though speaking of developers having fun with their content the second DLC of the two might be the ultimate example of them doing exactly that The Ballad of Gay Tony is a tremendously over-the-top tale of greed and super foolishness one of the things I like most about this DLC is the amount of new gameplay content and brought in most notably the parachute once you get the chute you never really want to go back playing the vanilla game is boring because you can't just jump off every building you want it includes a lot more weapons missions collectibles and vehicles all of that actually begins to address a lot of the issues I had previously in the game in terms of variety if the loss of the dam dealt with the problems of family the gay Tony deals with themes of loyalty and this deal see everything and everyone has a price information has a price you have a price and your loyalty has a price your player character or Louise is a full-time assistant to the nightclub owner gay Tony your loyalty to him is the main driving factor of the game and it takes you down some interesting paths the two main characters here are constantly fighting against the urge to sell everything away for a quick dollar including each other you encounter so many different friends from the original game and play a vital role in the museum section from the original game and the lost and the damned where the previous DLC was dirty this one is glamorous and over-the-top it's exciting and irreverent inventive and confident I like this one a lot more than the loss in the Damned I actually don't have a lot more to say about the DLC most everything I said before applies but as a general rule this is some of the best downloadable content in videogames [Music] Grand Theft Auto 4 is absolutely a game that has defined a genre it's a transcendent title that breaches all known phases of gamer and beyond its presence has touched all games and has influenced entertainment as a whole it is shown the world that it is okay to create games that are just for fun and it's okay to create games even if some lawmakers don't like it for every kid that it emboldened to be violent it acts as an outlet for 100 more who have no other way of expressing anger for most however it is a completely harmless pastime that does not encourage any sort of negative behavior the game itself is flawed it is certainly not the third best game ever made as Metacritic believes it to be it is not an Oscar level acting performance as IGN says it to be it is above all a gameplay experience that at the time was completely isolated to the very disk it resided on now we see GTA clones everywhere though ultimately the game overcomes a lot in order to produce a holistically good title where the writing fails the characters succeed where the gameplay fails the world you play the game in succeeds put it together and there wasn't really anything ever quite like it grand theft auto is the natural progression of video games if humans create something where you can control someone in a fantasy world then it is only natural that we create a playground as twisted and rhetorically aggressive as Liberty City a world that inhabits the most exaggerated forms of not only Americans but maybe just humans as always I want to thank you guys so much for watching these videos are tough to make and I apologize that this one came out later than I normally would like it's a bit of a tradition here to do sort of a channel update at the end and this video is no different I don't think I'm going to do game study anymore if you don't know game study is the video series I do where I go in-depth on one concise idea I have they're usually around 10 minutes long the videos don't do as well and people respond more to these analysis analyses anyway this isn't 100% but I don't see me doing it for a while what this means though is that there will be less videos uploaded but longer ones each video after this will probably be an analysis as far as what's next it's kind of hard to say I know but I don't know if you guys want to know or if you want me to you know keep it a secret I'll most likely be streaming me playing it before I start the script so come by if you're interested and what it will be link is down below this video was over 11,000 words long I played almost 50 hours of gameplay editing is editing and is generally pretty miserable I understand that if you made it this far into the video you must enjoy what you are listening to please like this video and share with someone I know this is asking a lot but I really enjoy doing this my life is about to ramp up with my final year in university I want to keep doing this so so badly but it's hard to justify the amount of work it takes sometimes seeing the comments good and bad help me justify it seeing subscribers and views really helps and by you sharing it it helps all of that that's all I'll say criticism also helps a lot I like it all even if you think you are sounding rude I promise it won't bother me each video is an attempt to get better at this so thank you for watching it to this point please like and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and if you've made it this far please let me know in the comments or on Twitter until next time guys have a great night

Channel: DavidOZ

Views: 554,602

Keywords: Grand Theft Auto Four, Analysis, video game analysis, long form video game analysis, videos like joseph anderson, videos like matthewmatosis, videos like the jimquisition, noah gervais, caldwell, GTA retrospective, an in depth analsis of GTA games, gta in the court room, niko bellic, best gta characters, thematic readings of video games, video games as literature, liberty city analysis, analysis of niko bellic, which gta game is best, gta four retrospective, gand theft auto

Id: NKaMXJ0Rjac

Length: 54min 12sec (3252 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2017