My Ideas: Or Maybe Reviews: The More Pretentious Side of Stealing Cars

I feel that I didn't give Grand Theft Auto IV the treatment it deserved. Sure, it had problems. Sure, the series itself hasn't changed that much since 3. And sure, nearly everything that could be said about the series has been said for the last two damn years or so. That...that's sort of a convincing argument, really.

Nonetheless, there is something I recently noticed that I haven't seen so much on our friend the Internet. If it isn't in a sub-thread on tvtropes, it's not a common theory, so here we go.

I'll start by focusing on a character that annoyed the crap out of me when I first played the game. Oh, spoilers coming up by the way. But again, it's been two years, so you had your chance.





The character is Florian, a friend of main character Niko's from the old country, a former member of his military unit, and for much of the game, possibly the traitor that got the rest of Niko's friends killed. But when Niko finally meets him, not only is he innocent, but he managed to completely turn his life around. He's living a peaceful life as an aerobics instructor, and he now goes by the name Bernie. Oh, and he's also gay. Really, flamboyantly gay.

Now, it's nice that a Grand Theft Auto game actually has a positive gay character. And after Niko learned Florian/Bernie was innocent, he befriended him again and helped him on several problems. But I was annoyed that he was such a stereotype. For a former soldier, he is incredibly useless in a fight, forcing Niko to do everything.

But as I thought about it, I realized that there is more to it than that. The game's main theme is about the horrors of war and violence and how people react to it. It's pretty established that those suffering from this past never emerged unscathed. That's true for Niko, of course, who's surprisingly honest about how shell-shocked he is. Most of the other characters are just as affected, but he puts up a persona to hide it. That's my theory at least for Roman's irrational optimism and the gambling addiction it manifests. Of course America is wonderful! Of course the future will be great! They have to be. Because home and the past were too horrible to contemplate, literally. Without that wonderful future to focus on, he'd actually have to think about and react to the past.

Hence Florian. Of course he'd be gay regardless of his history. And going from a conservative society to a liberal city in America with a healthy gay subculture, he'll probably embrace it. But that's not the only reason for his transformation. Florian saw all the terrible, traumatizing things that Niko did. But Bernie didn't. By becoming this new person, a person so completely different from his old life, he can have a happy life. You can see a bit of the old Florian at times, especially when Niko mentions Darko, the man who actually betrayed them. But that's the last thing he wants to be. If he goes back into his old life, his soldier's life, he has to deal with that memory again. For the same reason, it isn't vanity that makes him angry whenever Niko calls him Florian instead Bernie. It's because he ISN'T Florian anymore and he will never want to go back.

On a similar note, I think Dimitri, usually the main villain in the game, was not always the scheming disloyal rat he is revealed to be about a third of the way through the game. In fact, he wasn't even like that until immediately before he betrays the main character. He had his own traumatic past, including prison and life as a crime lord, but his breaking point came when he had to kill his own best friend to preserve his life.

Dimitri couldn't handle doing this or even stand to look at it, especially not while dealing with the man who physically did the deed and suddenly being forced to run an entire organized crime family when he previously could take a dispassionate look at his crimes and balance the books. So he created a new persona of his own: Dimitri the rascal, the rat, the betrayer. There is evidence throughout the game. He frequently blames Niko for his friend's death, never accepting his own responsibility for it. After all, as far as he was concerned, he didn't do it; the Rascal did. And the Rascal doesn't care. Or look at how his tendency to betray ceases to be even rational late into the game, especially in the "Deal" ending path. Even his voice changes after the incident. One might even argue that his constant attacks on Niko personally and those he cares about are an attempt to get Niko to kill him, the ultimate way to hide from the responsibility of his actions. This theory makes Dimitri a much more sympathetic character, or at least one with more depth, and one that is thus fitting for the darker version of Grand Theft Auto that this game strove for.