Grand Theft Auto IV Remains The Most Important GTA
The Grand Theft Auto series of games has long been one of the best-selling games in the gaming industry. New installments sell in the millions on the first day of release and soon become golden classics, and GTA Online is one of the most successful and popular online games.
What is hidden under the bright mask of a criminal action movie called GTA? What inspired the Houser brothers when creating their stories and what message did they put into the stories they told? Let’s find out in this article.
Let’s start with who the brothers Dan and Sam Housers are. They are the screenwriters of all (with the exception of Advance) parts of Grand Theft Auto, who were born in London and from childhood were fond of watching action films and westerns, were part of a bohemian family (mother was a fairly famous actress, and father brought many jazz stars to visit), dreamed of becoming rock -stars (and Sam dreamed of becoming a bank robber as a child). The musical career did not work out, but by coincidence, the first part of Grand Theft Auto was developed within the walls of the DMA Design studio.
The gameplay is essentially familiar to all GTA fans – car theft, shooting, multiple levels of police countermeasures. Moreover, it was originally planned to make a game just about a law enforcement officer who is chasing bandits, but it turned out to be much more fun to take on the role of a criminal whose “entertainment” was not limited to chases and interceptions. But all this was still not what the brothers wanted – the imaginary freedom of action was limited to the choice of cars and fairly similar tasks, and stories on a similar scale were as simple as two fingers.
It is worth noting that even in such an ancient and backward version by today’s standards, the developers managed to consolidate the features of the gameplay of the series (different types of criminal missions, car theft, wanted levels) and even laugh at perverts and ridicule stereotypes about different races.
Grand Theft Auto 2 was released under the auspices of Rockstar Games, but had the same average success as the first part. The degree of insanity has not decreased (how do you save progress in the church for money?), And the atmosphere of the game and the setting have become completely unique: a sort of cyberpunk with retro cars in 2013 (the game came out in 1999). More than Rockstar did not dare to such experiments and was inspired either by conservative eras or by the present time at the time of the development and release of the game, but fans released a Glitchpunk game inspired by this very atmosphere.
The first parts of GTA already had what became the hallmark of the series: absurd characters, various radio stations, vulgar puns and parodies of famous brands. But there was no deep story and a full-fledged open world, where the player was provided with many activities for entertainment.
An integral part of the charm of Grand Theft Auto is humor. Sometimes he’s just funny, sometimes he makes fun of creepy things or just replete with barbs from the category of “darkness”. But it has three important details.
A satire on modern society, in particular on American. And as you know, the American “dream” and the lifestyle of a typical resident of some New York or Los Angeles has long spread beyond internal borders and most of the globe suffers from excessive consumption and the influence of mass culture (of course, with its reservations).
We are shown powerful politicians dating prostitutes and cheating on their wives while their kids are laughing at the television show Shame or Glory, where negligent boys and ladies put themselves to shame in order to become famous. The general absurdity of what is happening is also positively affected by parodies of real brands, which are crazy about thousands of people who live in dreams about how they look like their idols because of the use of this or that product.
It is also very important to take into account the fact that certain parts of the series, although they are a completely universal reflection of human vices, still provide a picture of exactly the time in which the events of their history take place. For example, in GTA V, addiction to social networks (that same mission with Lifeinvader), stereotypes about programmers (and these are not stereotypes, but the bitter truth) and game nerds are played up.
The next point in building the very atmosphere for which we fell in love with this game series is the display of human vices. A certain peak in this matter Rockstar reached only in Manhunt, but a wider range of sins and deliberate “smoothing of corners” is presented in GTA.
Police arbitrariness and corruption in government bodies are a frequent occurrence. It did not bypass some stories from the world of GTA. An interesting story is Ray Machowski from the third part, who for a few years before 2001 was a respectable policeman, who for a long time was tried to be persuaded to corruption. As a result, he got involved in this scheme, became paranoid and handed over accomplices in crime, hiding in the toilet of a city park and seeking help from bandits. Blackmail by the police is the engine of the GTA San Andreas plot, where dishonest cops decided to “shake off” their crimes on the previously convicted CJ. The main characters of GTA V are also used for selfish purposes by agents of the game analogue of the FBI.
GTA is essentially anti-drug propaganda. Although we trade this poison in most games in the series, we are made clear about the harm that psychotropic substances bring. The main characters themselves do not play around with such things, and one of the goals of GTA III and San Andreas is the destruction of criminal syndicates. More than once we are shown to what level drug addicts sink and what difficulties they endure because of their addiction.
It would seem that Grand Theft Auto is a game about fun shootouts with the police and gangs with an inveterate scumbag in the title role.
But how does it really work? This is a painful prick in the direction of modern society, which shows in the main role not a criminal, but a respectable person who has deviated from the legal path, who is aware of the obscurantism around him. You can learn a lot of useful lessons from this game and sometimes even look at yourself from the outside.
