Lindvaettir wrote:I liked GTA IV, but I could never get past how Nico talked constantly, starting literally the first mission, about "I don't want to be a criminal." while barreling down the sidewalk in an SUV running down civilians, and you really couldn't NOT do that. In LA Noire, people dodged you. In Red Dead, you were a reformed criminal a bit like Nico, and you didn't have to kill any innocents, or even steal horses. Yet in GTA, it's almost impossible (probably actually impossible) to get through the game without stealing hundreds of cars and running over thousands of civilians. I know that that's the point of GTA, but presenting the protagonist as a sympathetic trying-to-reform guy didn't mesh well with the gameplay.
I had two theories:
1. Nico came from a conflicted country, lived a conflicted life, and was in a war. Even if he doesn't want to do bad stuff anymore, it's pretty much in his blood and is who he is.
2. I came up with a theory while watching some GTA4 mock news trailer. Everyone in the GTA world is noticeably more resistant to physical damage. It's why when you run people over, an ambulance will come and they're up on their feet after a quick shock.
I don't consider it a game mechanic, I consider it canonical, and it goes with the feel of the game world. Everyone is rash in their actions and clumsy in nature and thinking, because they can take more shit from nature. It goes with openly satirical tounge-in-cheek mirror version of our world, everything is more blatant, because everyone's balls are bigger. But they're also more dumber/underdeveloped.
Thus, jacking a car and shooting a young couple with a MAC-10 out the window while running over an old man isn't as bad a tragedy as in would be in real life. Horrible, yes. Devastating, no.