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The 50 Best Games: 47 - Grand Theft Auto IV
When Grand Theft Auto III first hit, it changed the way we expected to interact with a large connected world. There were scores of NPCs roaming around and it provided the freedom of the best fantasy RPGs, but put it in a violent, modern-day New York facsimile. For me, it was always a fun way to goof around and use cheat codes to test the limits of this space.
Grand Theft Auto IV then was the natural extension of that concept. The virtual city simulation was blown out and it all crime trimming were presented through the lovable, dangerous criminal, Niko Bellic. While Grand Theft Auto V improved the fidelity, it felt like they lost a lot of the charm that came with Niko's introduction to Liberty City. He was new to the city and had a reverence for it that mirrored my appreciation for seeing Liberty City rendered at an all new scale.
I loved the way the city felt lived in. I wanted to live in it. I could go on dates, take her bowling, get a hot dog on the street and then get in a fight with the vendor, go to a comedy show, steal a car, and not answer my date's phone calls the next day. I could get in a taxi and watch the entire simulated drive from point to point because why not?
What GTA V got wrong for me was not making a city that I wanted to see. They put it in fake-L.A. which was then full of nothing but terrible side-activities like yoga. The side stuff in IV was effectively just as useless, but they were activities that sold the city to me where Los Santos constantly tried to tell me how horrible of a place it was. I want the city to be just as important and interesting to the narrative as the characters and IV did that perfectly for me.
