I feel rotten for not having posted here in a while. I feel like I’m failing whoever might still read this.
Ugh. I feel rotten overall, too. I had Waffle House tonight – we (Stan, JJ, Cody, and I) went there and got a midnight snack. I guess it didn’t agree with me… Overall today was pretty long, but rather cool – Cody graduated and all.
……Fast Forward.
I wrote that last night. Got tired of trying to write and instead spent the night online with Tricia. :)
Whenever I sleep at Stan’s I get very, very strange dreams. Unfortunately I can never remember them. Sometimes I do for some time of the morning… but never long enough to write them down. As was the case this morning, too – I was in a daze as Cody drove home, I went upstairs and flopped onto my bed and I was out for the next several hours of dreamless sleep.
I also sat around and rearranged my iTunes songs for my iPhone and ended up downloading some trailers via iTunes: Tropic Thunder, which looks terribly entertaining, and the new The Incredible Hulk trailer:
The Motherfucking Hulk SMASH. I think they nailed this one. Looking forward to it. :P Let it buffer for a while – someone managed to get an HD video on youtube, but it takes a bit. Speaking of movies, my brother and I just finished watching Fight Club. :D
Anyway, back to what I’d written last night. As we were watching the graduation ceremony for my brother, I found myself in conversation with his girlfriend about the… exaggerated appeal of it all. It’s just high school, we remarked. Yet the excitement and the seriousness, the “sanctity” of the event – all laughable. No air horns, no beach balls, yet people still yelled and cheered for their kids like lunatics – as if that diploma was the sole culminating achievement of their children’s lives. Speeches by students saying “We did it!” Well… yeah, so did about 95% of everyone else sitting out in the audience did too – let’s face it, the district we live in has a ton of money and wealthy families. Given the resources and help, anything less than graduation would be pathetic. If this were the county next door, or inner city kids, then that’s a different story. And the little Valedictorian girl was pretty pompous; full of hot air and an overwhelming sense of self-pride. Go on and tell everyone at college you were Valedictorian of your class and see how long it takes and how many “so whats” you’ll get before you realize it’s a one-time title, and after that it’s essentially useless. Get over yourself.
*coughs* That being said, I beat GTA 4. Probably the best story for a video game I’ve ever seen, period. Especially the ending. SPOILERS AHOY!
To sum things up:
11:47:54 PM Chik and Lemming: so? GTA?
11:49:14 PM Fish: so the game begins with Niko stepping off the boat, ready to start his life anew in Liberty City. He is met by his cousin Roman, and Niko soon discovers that the “American Dream” Roman told Niko about is a lie – Roman is a struggling owner of a small cab business
11:49:46 PM Fish: Niko is frustrated, but also learns that Roman has a bit of a gambling problem and owes money to the Russian mob.
11:50:43 PM Fish: Niko begins taking oddjobs from them to pay it off, eventually earning some clout with them. Finally, one of the bosses goes kinda nuts, so his best friend and right hand man, Dimitri, has Niko kill the boss.
11:51:29 PM Fish: Turns out Dimitri was using Niko, and wanted Niko and Roman dead, but you and your cousin eventually escape. Dimitri torches both the cab business HQ AND their apartment in the slums.
11:51:52 PM Chik and Lemming: o.o hmmmmmm
11:52:17 PM Fish: Roman’s girlfriend takes them in for a while, and you do oddjobs for other mobs around town. You also find out why Niko came to the states aside from a new beginning… he fought in the Bosnian War.
11:53:11 PM Fish: his squad was betrayed for money, and they and their entire village was slaughtered… he and only 2 others of the squad survived, so one of the other two must’ve betrayed them, and they both live in Liberty City.
11:53:24 PM Fish: Niko wants to know why – they were practically brothers.
11:54:06 PM Fish: that’s why he’s taking these jobs… so the mob can find these men for him.
11:55:40 PM Fish: so… the plot continues… Roman eventually gets engaged to his girlfriend…
11:56:11 PM Fish: Niko takes more jobs, meets more new interesting people… the McReary’s are an Irish bunch of mobsters, but they have a sister, Kate, who Niko begins to care for.
11:56:31 PM Fish: Niko finds one of his old squad guys, Florian.
11:56:52 PM Fish: Florian changed his name to Bernie and is now a gay aerobics instructor – not the betrayer.
11:57:17 PM Fish: Florian’s obviously moved on.
11:57:28 PM Fish: which brings me to me finishing the game tonight.
11:57:43 PM Fish: They got the other guy, Darko.
11:58:13 PM Fish: you’re given a choice – execute him for his deeds or leave him.
11:58:17 PM Chik and Lemming: mhmm?
11:58:42 PM Fish: I left him. he was obviously ill in the head – tortured himself with drug addictions…
11:59:12 PM Fish: it was powerful, but just after that was the final mission.
12:00:22 AM Fish: Jimmy Pegorino, an Italian mobster you’ve been working for, has finally got buyers for a HUGE shipment of heroin you’ve been helping to hide and stash for a while: The Russian Mob. Their contact and business parter? Dimitri.
12:01:27 AM Fish: Niko refuses, but Pegorino threatens him and Roman and says once this is done, they get a huge payload, he’s no longer indebted to any mafias, and he can start his new life having settled his troubles from the Bosnian War past.
12:02:28 AM Fish: Well, after the “assignment”, Niko calls Roman for advice, and Roman slips that he found out where Dimitri is.
12:02:45 AM Fish: Niko now has the choice of killing Dimitri or doing the deal.
12:03:19 AM Fish: Roman begs him to do the deal. Niko calls Kate for advice, she begs him not to trust Dimitri, he’s betrayed him before and will again.
12:03:35 AM Fish: I was given the choice.
12:03:51 AM Fish: I chose to do the deal for the betterment of Niko and Roman’s new lives.
12:04:14 AM Fish: of COURSE the deal goes sour, but you get the money and Niko is still alive.
12:04:34 AM Fish: this sealed the fate for the final mission – Roman’s wedding.
12:04:49 AM Chik and Lemming: mhmm?
12:05:15 AM Fish: you go to the church, watch the wedding…. when one of Dimitri’s hitmen shows up to silence Niko.
12:05:29 AM Fish: they scuffle over the gun, and it goes off, killing Roman in the arms of his new wife.
12:05:46 AM Chik and Lemming: o.o
12:06:33 AM Fish: Niko looses it – unloads the gun into the corpse of the assassin, and vows revenge on Dimitri (who you witness murdering Pegorino so he can keep all the heroin money)
12:07:26 AM Fish: after a lengthy chase involving cars, speedboats, helicopters.. you finally kill him at the base of the Statue of Happiness (Statue of Liberty, basically)
12:07:39 AM Fish: just…. incredible cinematography.
12:07:42 AM Fish: and the dialogue.
12:07:43 AM Chik and Lemming: yeah? o.o
12:08:07 AM Fish: I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it could be the best game ever.
12:08:24 AM Fish: I was choked up by the end of it. Niko is a powerful character.
12:09:16 AM Fish: after the credits, the game saves and Niko calls Roman’s widow to say he’s avenged his cousin… you find out she was pregnant, and they were planning to announce it at the reception.
The other ending, less powerful, was that you chose to kill Dimitri, then at the wedding Pegorino and his men perform a driveby, killing Kate by accident. Then the chase is after Pegorino. An FAQ summed up my feelings on the ending perfectly:
“In my personal opinion, however, after having played through the entire game twice, I believe that the “Deal” option is actually the better ending, for several reasons. First, the loss of Roman is quite a bit more substantial of a blow to Niko than Kate. Roman is literally the first character we as the players meet in the game, and the tendentious bond between the cousins is substantial and even poignant at times. Kate is merely a single love interest in a series of potential love interests in the game, and the player can quite easily progress through the game while ignoring Kate almost entirely, save for her appearances in a few pre-mission cutscenes.
The “Mr. and Mrs. Bellic” cutscene respective to the different endings underscore this distinction quite nicely, in my opinion. The cutscene with Kate’s death seemed rather abrupt and poorly acted by comparison to the one in which Roman was killed. Niko, who rarely loses composure, firing the gun repeatedly into the lifeless corpse of the assailant was an extremely powerful scene and one that brought to life the powerful drive for revenge that would culminate in the final showdown with Dimitri. The event also solidified the folly of trusting Dimitri, both with respect to honestly carrying out the drug transaction and the likelihood of him leaving Roman and Niko alone.
The finale sequence is laden with irony in this respect. Those who had grown to have an affinity for Roman, and were thus inclined to accede to his wishes for Niko to forget his thirst for vengeance and do the deal with Dimitri, were punished with Roman’s death. By listening to Roman, you seal his fate, which is actually quite appropriate given Roman’s tendency to get himself into bad situations. By listening to Kate, you end up losing her. It is an appropriate twist for the rather grim and dark tale told in Grand Theft Auto IV.”
I can’t think of much more to say, other than you should play this game. You need to, if you love a good story. Even my telling of it all cannot do the real thing justice.
That’s it for now!
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