Weird Weekend
Weird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it’s the canon height of Thief’s Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.
Grand Theft Auto has always thrived on an outsider’s perspective. There’s something sardonically Scottish about its trademark tone—the relentless skewering of American excess and absurdity, paired with a loving recreation of the country’s most iconic cities. You can feel the awe of a tourist in the way your field-of-view shifts as you stare up at the skyscrapers of Liberty City—a technical trick that induces a kind of grounded vertigo.
Yet Rockstar had never so explicitly embraced the outsider before GTA 4. Niko Bellic is quite literally fresh off the boat, propelled by his cousin’s fanciful promises of riches, as well as the horror of the Balkan wars behind him. “I had been living in New York for a few years,” Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser told the Lex Fridman podcast two months ago. “I was single and miserable, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay in America.” This mood bled into GTA 4—reinforced by the aura of uncertainty and instability that the Hot Coffee controversy had brought to Rockstar’s door during the San Andreas years.
As a result, GTA 4 is often dour and grey—coloured the way Niko sees it, as a newcomer utterly unconvinced by the American dream. But the oppression induces its own kind of awe. Step out of your first safehouse in Hove Beach and you’ll find yourself directly under the railway, which blankets the street in shadow and the rattling roars of passing trains. Take a right and you’ll spot the ferris wheel of Firefly Island, its coloured lights only casting the surrounding sky into even deeper darkness.
This juxtaposition, of dazzling whites and abyssal blacks, appears to come straight from the ‘70s night movies of Walter Hill—The Driver and The Warriors, the latter of which Rockstar loved so much it released an adaptation for the PS2. The Warriors opens just as GTA 4 does, with the ferris wheel and the subway train, and the people too dangerous to be in bed.
Walter Hill, in turn, was inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. You’ll know Hopper’s most famous work, Nighthawks: the moody portrait of patrons in a New York diner, alone but together, lit up behind glass like fish in an aquarium. The painting finds a sad beauty in urban loneliness, a thread Rockstar picks up more than 60 years later.
The loneliness of being Niko Bellic is balanced by something approaching a social life—the hesitant connection of strangers in the city. That’s represented by GTA 4’s hangout and minigame mechanics, which add up to a gentle form of life simulation. Rockstar had been experimenting with similar systems in 2006’s Bully, which found missions jostling for attention with a full schedule of school classes. And even before that, GTA: San Andreas had introduced a host of non-criminal activities—tattoo parlours, burger bars, dating and the gym.
Where San Andreas encouraged a kind of insular stat management, however—tracking your fat loss like a Fitbit—GTA 4 is more concerned with the fuzzier business of conversation. During downtime, you see Niko reflected through the eyes of his acquaintances and lovers. He is ice cold (complimentary), nice (complimentary), or dressed like a schlub (derogatory). Much of the sense that GTA 4 is a game of choice and consequence comes from the fact that his outfits are scrutinised by his dates—down to the decision to stop wearing a particular pair of glasses.
Some of the chats are throwaway, but others are funny or poignant, revealing buried truths about the backgrounds of the Bellics. The terrible realities that have caused cousin Roman to retreat into fantasies of mansions and fast money. Players at the time felt that constant phone calls from Niko’s friends undermined the flow of their crime story—to the point that ‘Hey cousin, let’s go bowling!’ became an early meme. But I wonder now, in the wake of Persona’s domination of the West, whether these life simulation elements would be assessed differently.
Certainly, they give you another layer to think about while skidding around Liberty City. Just as the drug deals of Chinatown Wars give you reasons to make meaningful detours between districts, GTA 4’s hangouts encourage geographical opportunism. If a main mission takes you to northern Algonquin, maybe you’ll look up Dwayne, your downbeat counterpart in the projects. Spend enough time in his company and he’ll be ready to send backup goons during your most overwhelming firefights. A hilariously overpowered ability comes courtesy of Kiki, the downtown lawyer so convinced that Niko is unfairly targeted by the cops that she’ll happily call the District Attorney to clear his Wanted level, no questions asked.
There are undoubtedly key moments, especially later in the story, when GTA 4’s side activities and crime saga collide. Before its ending, you’re snapped back onto the tracks—any serious dating you’ve done dismissed as frivolous, in favour of the relationships that Rockstar has decided are the important ones.
Yet there are also flashes of brilliance, when GTA 4 relies on the unseriousness of minigame activities to slip shocks under the radar. The first dating partner thrust your way is Michelle, a friendly and slightly neurotic figure who keeps all the tags on her furniture. By the time you’ve taken her to enough fast food joints and pool bars, you’ve stopped associating her with the main story. Until, that is, she reveals herself to be an undercover agent, and passes you over to her handler.
The tragic irony is that Michelle is the only character Niko has bothered to lie to—concealing his day job as a hitman to the highest bidder. And all along, she’s known exactly who he is. At every juncture, GTA 4 reinforces the idea that there’s no escape from yourself. Not even on a new continent.
Perhaps more notorious than GTA 4’s minigames is its driving physics: astonishingly detailed, unforgiving, and liable to send an unprepared newcomer flying through the windscreen. But it’s also fitting. GTA 4 is a game about a man trying to turn a corner. Who discovers that the momentum of his past mistakes is too great, and instead of steering the car around the bend, finds himself hurtling towards a wall.
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