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I’ve got plenty of posts I’ve written over the years that I (apparently?) never bothered posting. Let’s post a few!

Also? Spoilers abounds!

The GTA3 series was about gangsters. The first one had “thugs” and “mafioso.” Vice City was more the latter, with San Andreas more the former. But GTA4 was more daunting. It wasn’t about style, it was about SOMETHING. It was about the pursuit of the American dream, freedom, and Niko’s quest for freedom from his past. But it failed for me. The culprit was the mis-marriage of narrative elements and gameplay. I think Rockstar bungled it by trying to make the narrative highpoint something it shouldn’t have been. To me, it was pretty evident where the emotional highpoint was in terms of gameplay. And that’s what they should’ve went with for the narrative as well.

First, the “point” of GTA4. In one of the earlier missions in the game you’re given the freedom to kill, or to not kill, someone you’ve chased down. The freedom of choice is a recurring theme in GTA4. Niko talks about choosing a new life, after he cleans up a few loose ends. His cousin Roman constantly chooses to get in over his head in attempt to get ahead. In the game you’re given choices in multiple missions. In at least three distinct places during the main narrative you’re given a choice between killing one of two strong supporting characters. (Francis McReary/Derrik McReary, Dwayne Forge/Playboy X, and Pegorino/Dimitri.) And then there’s what is, to me, the biggest choice in the game, foreshadowed from the very beginning of the game.

Note: The player CHOOSES to shoot Darko Brevic here. You don’t have to. Purely optional. But for me, this is undeniably the highpoint of the game emotionally and for gameplay, given that it’s a choice the player makes. That was the moment that you, the player, decides who Niko is going to be from that moment forward. You decide what kind of man he will be. (Sure it’s odd thinking “I let the man who killed my friends live and I’m mowing down dozens of passersby while driving down the street.” but that’s acceptable in GTA, and not indicative of the narrative. Those people are pellets in Pac-Man. This man, is just that. A man.) What I have a problem with is that this is not the end of the game.

The narrative continues, picking back up a completely unconnected plot that was interspersed in a lopsided fashion throughout the game. And then Niko is offered another choice, his final. You have to take a side in a mob dispute.

Wait, what? A mob dispute? I go through some deep emotional issues, dredge up the deaths of my entire fucking village back in Eastern Europe, and my childhood friends who died in a war? And deal with the fact that it was made possible by the only other surviving friend from that time, who is completely unrecognizable to me? And then… A mob dispute? What the fuck? It’s like your mother dies in a car wreck and your boss says “So, uh, the funeral’s Thursday? You’re uh, going to be able to come in this Saturday to fill in for Bob, right?”

After this monumental moment for Niko, which has no bearing on the rest of the game, you choose between helping Pegorino or Dimitri. Depending on which you kill, either your cousin or your girlfriend is killed, and you are forced to kill the remaining mobster. Forced to kill. Even after you just (potentially) let the man who got your entire army squad killed for a thousand dollars, live. The killing of your goddamned annoying cousin, or the girlfriend who was as interesting as a (blank brown) cardboard box, is the straw that broke the camel’s back? And for that you end on the down note of your decision to not have really mattered after all.

Allow me to offer a different suggestion. Something that should have happened before Darko Brevic was delivered. FIRST you do your requisite mafioso bit. Go ahead, make me choose. Kill one of the people I somewhat remotely feel something that could almost be considered an obligation to. Piss me off. Get me angry. This fucker, this Godfather-wannabe thinks he can kill the woman-I-(am-forced-to)-love/my-cousin-(that-annoys-me-but-fuck-it-he’s-family-you-know-what-I-mean-you-have-a-cousin-like-that-too)?! Fuck that noise, let’s jack a car and go kill some goddamn virtual bad guys!

Bam. Cut to the end. Done. I’ll miss my cousin/girl. They meant a lot to me. Well, to Niko/me. THEN… *ring* “What, what’s that? My phone? Hello? What? You found Darko Brevic? Where is he?”

(Skip to 4:15.)

Because goddamn it, that’s an ending. If you’re going to bother giving me a choice? Let it mean something.

I’ve mentioned it in my Twitter, but I’d like to draw your attention to a podcast that my friend Justin and I are doing. It’s the Game Industry Newscast.

The concept is that most podcasts (particularly gaming podcasts) are very long, site/personality-dependent, and about how the hosts feel about the news and games they’re playing, all in an attempt to entertain. We go in the absolute opposite direction. Short (less than 3 minutes,) factual (no grandstanding, that’s why I have a blog,) and serious, with intent to inform.

Want to be informed and still have an extra hour to spare? Listen to the Game Industry Newscast. Have some GIN.

Of course if you’re into Twitter, we’ve got one of those, too.

Obviously the future of Grand Theft Auto lies between San Andreas and GTA4. What do I mean? Imagine the rich world (There’s so much room for activities!) created by San Andreas, but with the ability to download new chapters like GTA4. This is what’s needed. Of course, what will the next GTA be like? I certainly have no clue. I can only suggest what I would like it to be. And with that, I present Grand Theft Auto: Blue, Green, and Gold.

Imagine a rural community on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. Wait, rural America? Damn right. Why? TN and KY are second and third in the rate of domestic US marijuana production (according to the latest numbers I found, 2006: http://www.drugscience.org/Archive/bcr2/domstprod.html.) This gives awesome potential for a series whose linking element is that you control a criminal.

See, I don’t want Rockstar to out-do themselves with a sprawling huge city with FOUR major areas instead of three and call that progress. I want them to out-do themselves with the amount of in-game data that they’re able to juggle. I’d gladly take a smaller more persistent world over a larger more sprawling one. More persistent elements in the world would go a great way toward helping create a more dynamic narrative structure, and that’s going to be important if we’re creating a world we’re going to want to expand on. I want them to make the game-story as open as the world, or to at least try.

So we start with a small town, an “across the tracks” neighborhood (where poor blacks live,) a trailer park (where poor whites live,) homes around the city for the more affluent, and a handful of apartment complexes for middle income folk scattered across the town. Straight through the city is one long six-lane Interstate with a four-lane loop around it. The ends of the six lane Interstate have a mountain tunnel on each end that just loops the player around. In the barren area around the city? Plenty of dirt roads, farms, a river with a few creeks, a small private airfield full of Cessnas, forests, maybe a sand dune, and hidden marijuana fields.

I want it filled with different actions like aircraft, bikes, side jobs, police missions, fire dept. missions, minigames, etc. just like San Andreas was. Keep a robust amount of activities with which to play off of later, but don’t use them all in the game’s plot.

I want Frank, the town drunk to start out at McDonald’s, and by the time I drive all the way around the town, he’s only stumbled his way down the road to Pearline’s Fried Chicken. (Whereas in the current GTA games, he’d probably just magically appear at random locations around the city.) I want some redneck named Clevon’s Station-Wagon-meth-labs exploding with a slight irregularity and small town news vans showing up like it’s the most important thing that’s ever happened. I want someone like Sheriff Buford T. Justice harassing a guy named Leroy for being black, but the Sheriff will claim that Leroy is a suspected drug dealer, so Leroy calls out the Sheriff on his racism, and the Sheriff skulking off. And once he’s gone, I want Leroy to actually sell drugs. If you shoot someone, the body should stay there (unless you move it,) and if someone finds it, the police and media show up. The county coroner plots against the sheriff, the city commission plots against him, small town politics get ugly. Cops keep their eyes open for any impropriety. I want cops to keep an eye out for your car, and your clothes, and changing them is how you ditch cops, not going through some magical paint shop. This is the world I want to play my games in.

But why? What kind of story could we get from this?

Put the player in the role of a young troublemaker banned from his similar county back home in Tennessee after being a known drug runner, but him never being caught. Keep alluding to “the shootout,” as the final straw that had the Sheriff of his last home threaten to kill him if he didn’t leave. Have a few references to a bloodbath in his home town, and have people who find out where he’s from be a bit in awe, and ask questions someone who’s been in serious shit wouldn’t ask. I’m convinced that this is golden.

Expansions?

-After the game’s end, the County Coroner arrests the Sheriff for being corrupt (as revealed in the game proper, after which our hero drives off in the sunset.) Of course, he’s even more twisted. In steps a secondary character in the game to save the day.

-Pizza delivery guy gets robbed and goes on an epic mission to get his $12.93 and tip.

-A pilot trying to make an important deadline makes an emergency landing on the town’s small airstrip and finds himself in the middle of thugs loading an airplane with gross amounts of weed. They try to kill him, but as he runs into the forest for safety, he stumbles across a cabin with a good ole boy who saves him. The player must now retrieve his aircraft by spoiling the operation, getting his plane fixed, and escape by a set time in order to make his mysterious delivery. More hijinks ensue.

I could go on all day, none the single most original thing you’ve heard, but all enough to make anyone’s imagination say “hey, yeah.” No, I don’t expect anyone to read this far, but, I had to expand on it. It’s been rumbling around in my head for a while and I meant to post it here a while back. Good to get it out.