Looking at a pair of GTA games that deserve as much honor as the others
Gamers of all strides know the gods of controversy at RockStar Games and their most famous series of all: Grand Theft Auto. Developed by Scotsmen in 1997 under what used to be DMA Design, the working title was changed from Race n Chase to that of a motor vehicle theft, even though the games have always featured way more than that.
It wouldn’t be until the game’s 3D era installments in the Fall of 2001 that set a precedent across the gaming industry. Being one of the games that perfects the 3D formula as other games were failing or meeting expectations prior to the turn of the millennium is one hell of an accolade. Future games continued to reinvent the wheel, with a voiced protagonist and ownable assets in Vice City (2002), RPG elements in San Andreas (2004), and by the HD era, the characters got grittier and more realistic with the GTA 4 and Episodes from Liberty City protagonists of Niko Bellic, the Yugoslav War vet, Johnny Klebitz, the biker, and Luis Lopez, the nightclub manager.
That being said, the 3D trilogy protags and the ones pictured above from the HD era, coupled with the three protags of GTA 5, are the most memorable ones which becomes extremely ironic for the GTA III protagonist: Claude, a silent protagonist who can best be described as an amoral psychopath even without dialogue.
But among the myriad of GTA characters, there’s a few that don’t get as much recognition from the 3D era from a pair of forgotten GTA games. This post will focus on the first of these — Vice City Stories — while next week’s post goes to the second in this two-parter: Liberty City Stories. Those titles almost give me the impression upon reflection that there were drafts for a San Andreas Stories that never came to light.
So what’s Vice City Stories about? It’s set in 1984, two years before Vice City’s protagonist Tommy Vercetti gets out of prison and heads to Vice City, Florida (no fake state this go around), and follows the protagonist Victor Vance. He starts as a corporal in the U.S. Army and is sent to do bullshit tasks for his NCO Sgt. Jerry Martinez. Martinez, though, is an outlier of shitbaggery with most of his tasks being especially illegal. And with Vance as the fall guy, he gets kicked out with a dishonorable discharge for being caught with pot and coming to base with a hooker in toe on Martinez’s orders.
I want to tangent for a bit. If you’ve been in the military, especially the Army, there’s a few things that almost don’t add up very well. It’s an inside joke that Army corporals are very ignored and shat on by higher ups. Specialists are often seen as belonging to a club known as the E-4 mafia. Tons of videos explain what that is, but to my understanding, the shitty details relegated to lower enlisted normally include those in pay grade E-1 to -4, though a Specialist with some time in service knows a few tricks of the trade to get around performing said shitty details. Again, videos can explain it better than an entertainment blog.
Also, there’s a sad reality about the U.S. military that senior noncoms are almost always looked over when they misbehave since they’ve shown to be such an asset for being in for so long at so high a rank, even if their direct leadership (first sergeants and sergeants major) is simply impressed that they can run two miles in under fifteen minutes. Part of that is a joke, but there’s some truth to it. Theoretically, a sergeant first class in the Army or a gunnery sergeant in the Marines can be a total asshole to everyone below him or her and probably face nonjudicial punishment because of something stupid. So it raised a few alarm bells for me that Martinez was a sergeant at the pay grade of E-5 and not E-7 or higher. He probably has more time in service but got passed over for different reasons (the 1980s U.S. Army was a vastly different beast), but who knows?
But enough about military politics. Other outlets can better bitch and moan about that. Back to the game. Following Vance facing the worst of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, a few contacts made on the outside help Vic out and get him back on his feet. He explains to Sgt. Martinez that his purpose for joining the military was to provide for his family, though the game reveals how crap they all are with money, save for the one in his immediate family that really needs it, his sickly younger brother.
When you get an honorable discharge from the Army, ideally you have the best credentials because of how great it makes your resume look. Dishonorable discharge is a different story and Vic could generally be far, far worse than a dope peddler. Interestingly, halfway through the game he expresses discomfort for this part of the criminal underworld, sticking mainly with extortion, racketeering, and prostitution. Still morally questionable, but the character arc almost reminds me of Walter White in Breaking Bad, which is interesting as VCS was released about two years before Breaking Bad premiered on AMC in 2008.
I think I may have material for a future post. While I know what happens at the end of the game, having seen gameplay of it on YT, I’m refraining from major spoilers and looking at features lifted from other games. Swimming is here to stay and the era of “touch water equals death” was gone briefly until RockStar’s 2010 western game Red Dead Redemption brought it back because…
The asset ownership returns from San Andreas and Vice City and this time, Vic has a choice over what to turn a newly acquired building into. Rival gangs can attack your shit and if you don’t hustle, you pay out of pocket to fix it. There’s also side missions and upgrades to do and the fiscally conservative of you might sing your praises if the income outweighs the expenses. This was the case for me personally. You get your pay every day at 4:00 PM, and since I barely spent anything, my daily income brought me a fifth of the way to six figures, so paying to fix shit didn’t really faze me. A feature that also shaped GTA games in the future was bribes.
Whenever you get busted or wasted in game in this era, the authorities tending to you take away your guns, but in this game you can buy them all back. Then with GTA 4, only the police took your guns away. Mentioning the timeline in a non-spoilery way, the 3D era blends pretty well though there’s a few inconsistencies. Some characters disappeared from the timeline momentarily to show up in another game apropos of nothing. Sometimes characters aged incorrectly (see Phil Cassidy for more information). But putting aside developer oversight, the gangs within were mostly consistent, with X gang shown to be powerful in X game or Y gang disbanding because of actions in Y gang, etc., etc.
All of these would at least be grounds for a remake or remaster, or so I’d think, but III, VC, and SA get the most love as those were the three to be remade at least twice, first in the early 2010s to coincide with their respective ten year anniversaries, and again in 2021 to coincide with the 20 year anniversary of GTA III, though faceplanting at the first hurdle.
As well loved as these three games are, they scratch the surface of what the 3D games had to offer and leave a few things out of the narrative and timeline of the 3D era. You could piece together everything with just CJ, Tommy, and Claude and call it a day — many have done that — but personally, I like the extras included by these games inclusion. In fact, I’ll probably work on a timeline blog in the future. I’ve played these games a fair bit and I’ve got a solid grasp of the story.
I mentioned in the last post that for February, I would include YouTube channel recommendations. For February 3, 2023, I recommend the channel Tactical Bacon Productions. This channel covers video game content mainly focused on David Jaffe’s repertoire most famously Twisted Metal and God of War. The most common way to support him are through subscriptions and he does have a Patreon for which donations can be made. The link to his channel is below. If you want to hear more about Kratos or the games that were inspired (even heavily) by Twisted Metal, look no further.
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