author: Luc
A Choice That Leads Nowhere. Let’s Take a Look Back at Grand Theft Auto IV – The Most Serious Game in the GTA Series
Table of Contents
Although the comedic situations and characters typical of the previous installments were still present in the game, the emphasis shifted completely. Here, the driving force of the story was present in the form of a heavy atmosphere and emotional dilemmas of the main antihero, with whom we quickly establish a specific bond. Niko Bellic, a war veteran from the Balkan region, comes to Liberty City to start a new life. Lured by his cousin’s promises, he decides to leave the past behind and move towards a better future. At least this might be the initial impression. However, it soon becomes clear that the motives of the main character are much more complex. What’s more, he has his fair share of experiences nothing short of traumatic. The character soon confesses that he came to the United States to exact revenge on his former partner whose betrayal led to the death of the majority of the members of his former unit. This part of the story alone brings about an emotional aspect significantly greater than what was present in all previous installments of Grand Theft Auto combined, but Rockstar was not going to stop there.
The need to take revenge on the person who ruined his life is used by our antihero as a an ultimate excuse for almost everything he does. While trying to escape the demons of his past, he ends up chasing them instead, falling into a spiral of hatred and violence immediately after arriving in the US, which leads him to his present fate. Murder, drug trafficking, extortion, robbery – this is Niko's reality and even though his deeds are hardly commendable, we still end up feeling some sympathy for him. At the end of the day, an irresistible desire for revenge is something we are able to understand, although the longer we play, the more obvious it becomes that the hero is driven by something else as well. Survival, in its broad meaning, to which the protagonist refers all the time, no longer sounds like a legit explanation when we find ourselves reveling in hundreds of thousands of dollars, and yet fail to refuse increasingly "dirtier" jobs. Niko himself acknowledges during the game that he "works for anyone who will pay properly." Most of the time, Bellic is in denial about his murderous and greedy nature, telling herself that once he gets his revenge, he will finally be able to leave the life of crime behind. However, the greatest tragedy of his life doesn't affect him until the finale of the story.
In the end, we come face to face with Darko Brevic and have to choose whether to spare his life or take it. Considering the fact that Niko spent the last couple of years obsessed with revenge, another murder seems to be an obvious solution at this point. However, seeing what a wreck of a man our nemesis became, we find that the decision is not a simple one. Players who chose to listen to everything Darko had to say during this scene had to deal with another, equally painful fact. “You say I ruined you? You were always a killer! I just helped you see that", said Brevic. These words contain a powerful emotional message, which calls into question everything that we saw during the game. The tragic situation is further aggravated by the fact that no matter what we do, we're somehow on the losing side. By killing Brevic, we achieve nothing and Niko himself admits that after the murder he feels the same as he did before – just empty. All the crimes that he had previously committed in the name of revenge and survival, prove to be pointless ... or just confirm Darko's last words. Sparing our nemesis’ life puts us in an almost identical situation and neither does it change anything.
