A recent review said they heard someone say something about the purity of this game, and for my money, it is an apt description, far more precise than the neglect with which contemporary perspectives treat this - like it or hate it - monument in the medium's history. Only nineties kids (and probably those older) remember how incredible this game felt upon launch: Liberty City, murder sprees, tanks, celebrity voice acting, a shockingly good radio that kept you seated and eager as the fires consumed the car you jacked in some grand theft auto that began your umpteenth downtown massacre. Unbelievable stuff. You stood at the edge of the beach and breathed in the possibility that surrounded you.
Things have aged of course, but to me for some reason they are nowhere near as interesting to talk about. One returns to that idea of purity, and with the fireworks faded, one recognizes in 2021 how dark the shadows are at night, how dour the clouds, how graceful the rain as their pitter-patter gracelessly scores this city. Back then, when the game was a revolution, the city felt so alive and open. Only now has the rust revealed reality. This is a small and dead city, a small and dead game, starring a small and dead psychopath more or less destined to kill pedestrians and do missions. But this is not diminishment, rather, one now sees clearly the charms of this game, some twenty years on. The ocean of a childhood was just a piss puddle at daybreak in New York City.
Claude the protagonist is betrayed in the beginning, betrays his later allies, hunts down his betrayer, and possibly kills the only person he loved for talking too much. That's it. That's purity. That's what somehow makes this game better than Vice City, Scarface drained of de Palma, Pacino, and pathos. By contrast, GTA III lost nothing: it was content to make nothing its tone, atmosphere, story, character, and theme. Of all the GTA games, then, this one is invulnerable to the ever-looming (thankfully nowadays much less bandied about) accusation of ludonarrative dissonance. There is no conflict between story and gameplay. You are a killer and nothing but. Have fun. I did and do.
Things have aged of course, but to me for some reason they are nowhere near as interesting to talk about. One returns to that idea of purity, and with the fireworks faded, one recognizes in 2021 how dark the shadows are at night, how dour the clouds, how graceful the rain as their pitter-patter gracelessly scores this city. Back then, when the game was a revolution, the city felt so alive and open. Only now has the rust revealed reality. This is a small and dead city, a small and dead game, starring a small and dead psychopath more or less destined to kill pedestrians and do missions. But this is not diminishment, rather, one now sees clearly the charms of this game, some twenty years on. The ocean of a childhood was just a piss puddle at daybreak in New York City.
Claude the protagonist is betrayed in the beginning, betrays his later allies, hunts down his betrayer, and possibly kills the only person he loved for talking too much. That's it. That's purity. That's what somehow makes this game better than Vice City, Scarface drained of de Palma, Pacino, and pathos. By contrast, GTA III lost nothing: it was content to make nothing its tone, atmosphere, story, character, and theme. Of all the GTA games, then, this one is invulnerable to the ever-looming (thankfully nowadays much less bandied about) accusation of ludonarrative dissonance. There is no conflict between story and gameplay. You are a killer and nothing but. Have fun. I did and do.
minusforever
2 years ago