if i remember correctly I pretty much agree with you! The ending sucked. What would i have done differently? The whole story...
Well, the story really does go AWOL for 40+ missions in the middle. Maybe even 50+.
If anyone here has played Red Dead Remption -- has Rockstar gotten any better at editing themselves down a bit? One of the main things I am looking forward to with Lost Damned/Gay Tony is the 20 hour length.
I notice also they use some ...OMG... in-mission checkpointing in Lost Damned.
Bruce Willis is a ghost.
Okay, well I would have done this.
Niko goes to find Florian. Florian is the same character as in the game (Bernie) and upon seeing Niko he freaks out like he has seen the devil, and says something along the line of "it's you, why did you do the terrible things you did, why did you betray us?" Then you kill him.
Okay, so now the player is thinking, maybe Niko isn't who I thought he was this whole time. Maybe he is. Same gameplay unwinds after that until you get to Drako. He says the same kind of thing, but fleshes it out, basically Niko, rather than the one seeking revenge on someone who betrayed his fellow soldiers and committed war crimes, is he one who commited those acts. He went to NY to wipe out the last survivors, not to seek revenge. Kills Drako.
Okay, so now the world is completely flipped, and for the small remainder of the game instead of taking orders from anyone, you (as the player) start hearing Niko's thoughts and taking orders from yourself, along the lines of "Now I need to get rid of the people I have met in New York" So then, one by one you have to kill Roman and anyone else you have worked for. End battle is all of the survivors joining forces against you.
You win, call your government contact in Serbia, they send a private plane to the airport for you. Game Over.
But that would mean Nico is evil, and GTA doesn't like evil people.
Foolz said:But that would mean Nico is evil, and GTA doesn't like evil people.
Well, I don't know that that would make him any more evil than what he was in their story. Have you had any exp with the off-shoots yet?
I dont play GTA for story, they are usually a mess.
Gay Tony and Lost where cool cause they were smaller stories. Lost is probably the better overall story, Gat Tony is straight up insane but so much fun.
aspro said:Well, I don't know that that would make him any more evil than what he was in their story. Have you had any exp with the off-shoots yet?
Nope.
It's a twisted tragedy that looks at what the American Dream has become. In the 80's, characters like Scarface became millionaires through organized crime. As Niko, you fight your way tooth and nail just to make ends meet. You're never really rich and the best property you get is Playboy's appartment. The people you do business with are in the same predicament: Dwayne is a has-been gang banger from the San Andreas era; Roman is an immigrant whose taxi company doesn't cover his gambling habits; Packie is a self-hating sociopath who lives with his mother; Derrick is an Irish Dwayne; Francis is the token crooked cop. The rest are low-life drug dealers and losers. Niko tries to supplement his shortcomings through revenge, but by the end, he's too jaded and numb to feel anything. Whatever action you take, you end up losing someone you love, basically severing your last opportunity at starting over and having a normal life, and everything comes full circle.
Listen to Iced Earth and play Doom
Which is why at the end they put you back in the clothes you started out with in the shitty apartment you started in as well.
Yeah, I knew that was the theme of hte game, and they really wanted to slam that into you with what was essentially a prologue. But in that prologue I found the re-introduction of Kate (and even Roman to an extent) to be a distracting artifice.
Coopersville said:It's a twisted tragedy that looks at what the American Dream has become. In the 80's, characters like Scarface became millionaires through organized crime. As Niko, you fight your way tooth and nail just to make ends meet. You're never really rich and the best property you get is Playboy's appartment. The people you do business with are in the same predicament: Dwayne is a has-been gang banger from the San Andreas era; Roman is an immigrant whose taxi company doesn't cover his gambling habits; Packie is a self-hating sociopath who lives with his mother; Derrick is an Irish Dwayne; Francis is the token crooked cop. The rest are low-life drug dealers and losers. Niko tries to supplement his shortcomings through revenge, but by the end, he's too jaded and numb to feel anything. Whatever action you take, you end up losing someone you love, basically severing your last opportunity at starting over and having a normal life, and everything comes full circle.
: D:: is a Niko
And it's so poorly executed that none of that has any impact 90% of the time. Funnily enough you could say I was too numb and jaded by the terrible story telling to care much. 
^Oh yeah by far. I'd say, generously, that plot matters in the first and last 15% of the game. Which is hilarous when you consider that most players (not critics) came down on the game for being too serious and story driven (thus the exodus to Saint's Row).
They paid their pennance with Gay Tony (in terms of coming backe where gamers wanted them to be). I'll be very curious to see where this franchise goes next.
And it's so poorly executed that none of that has any impact 90% of the time.
I can agree that the plot isn't as good as Doom's, but it's the best GTA has had to offer.
Listen to Iced Earth and play Doom
Coopersville said:I can agree that the plot isn't as good as Doom's, but it's the best GTA has had to offer.
First point: hell yes. Second point: hell no. The story was a massive failure. They tried their hand at a more serious satire than the story in previous gaems and failed miserably. Thus the previous games' plots are superior; because they are told better. i'm referring of course only to Vice City and San Andreas. Maybe there's just something wrong with Liberty City.
Rather than post in the defacto GTA4 thread in Foolz blog I wanted to create a seperate spoiler filled thread so that no-one would come up on what happens at the end of that game.
So Nico comes to the US for revenge on Florian. He finds Florian, but he's not the guy. He gets to Drako and you get to make your choice as to whether to kill him or let him be.
Since at this point of the game I've killed innocent people just to get their moped to chase a homophobe through Central Park, I of course, blast this guy's head off with a shot gun. You know, since he's a mass murderer who I've spent the last 15 years or so hunting down.
So after I kill him the game character goes, "nothing has changed" -- Niko gets no cartharsis from the act whatsoever. Now, why the game doesn;t end there, I don't know. I mean the whole point of the game has been to kill this guy.
So convoluted story emerges, I now have the choice to seek revenge on a guy or do business with him. Having not received any solace from killing my nemesis, I of course choose the business route so I can make some money and get out of the murder game altogether (since I now have no need to be a errand boy for the mob). It is the consistent thing that Niko would do, though my personal choice would have been to kill Pegorino and Demetri -- why not, I've killed everything else...
So as a consequence of doing business I lose my "girl" who I really don't give a fuck about anyway since I have not seen her for about 50 missions, and she was technically a lieing whore. She apparently thinks I should have sought revenge instead? (Okaaay...) As a side result my cousin gets shot at his wedding, he would have been saved had I sought revenge. No big deal there either, who cares about him -- I mean at this point in the game I've been converted into a killing machine. I started out the game make legal parks, in the end I was shooting a woman who sought my help (like the druggie in the park friend mission) because she started mouthing off.
So anyway... where is the story here? It shoudl have ended with my choice of what do do with the scumbag I was hunting down, instead they tack on this part abuot some girlfriend I don;t care about not coming on a date with me?
If you played GTA4 through, let me know what you would have done differently. I have my own fan fic plot I'll break down in another post.