GTA 2 vs GTA IV or Classic turned into Artistic Masterpiece?

So I decided to start some real articles to interest people, I guess I'll start with the evolution of GTA and how the franchise as well as the core of the game represents a great game at heart.

GTA IV has been said to be one of the greatest games ever made. It's beautiful, realistic, and has enough content to keep even the most elite players at their 360s for days at a time. We all know the controversy, and have read all the reviews that rave at the game, but I noticed something lately: I am one of the few people who has played the original GTA's. You remember right? The top down view, was on the original gray Playstation, everything was 2D? No? That's sad you don't remember that game. 

I remember it well, mainly because the company that created the GTA franchise also created the hit or miss, but fun, Space Station Silicon Valley. Now I know many people haven't played that game, but it was originally for the Nintendo 64, and had some of the craziest gameplay mechanics for it's time. GTA took after its predecessors' crazy gameplay antics, by being one of the first games during the 32 bit console era to introduce a free world.  There were no levels, (there were new cities or in a context "new worlds"), the player's only objective was to make a certain amount of money to progress to another city, and you were free to shoot anyone you saw, and steal/destroy any car in the game.  During this time period this concept for a game would seem incredibly boring, "I'm some random guy running around a city shooting people and stealing cars." Today that sounds like 60% of the games released due to the success of the GTA franchise.  

The original GTA didn't sport HDRI lighting, but the gameplay made the experience fun.

The concept for that time period sounds boring or very bland to say the least. I mean thinking back during that time period the most popular games were based around the Mario 64 3d platforming design such as, Banjo-Kazooie, Croc, Spyro the Dragon, and Crash Bandicoot, to name a few.  The other popular genre were RPG's, which Square tended to dominate in since their time with the SNES, and the slowly evolving first and third person shooter/adventures, where Tomb Raider and Metal Gear Solid seemed to lead that parade in my opinion (the first person genre seemed to be strictly a PC gamer's domain, until Golden Eye came out). But none of those games are remotely related to the genre GTA opened up. The closest game to that genre which I also feel had the most influence on GTA was the Twisted Metal series. So lets pretend we're back in 1998, where Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64 (along with others) own the general market, instead of Halo and Gears of War. Well GTA doesn't seem like a feasible game to produce anymore now does it? Wait you think it is? Well if I was a publisher I wouldn't approve "I'm some random guy running around a city shooting people and stealing cars" game that's on the drawing board and that's exactly how the game industry felt. 

If you are saying "Well who cares? They made the game and that's all history and Lost and the Damned is the most fun thing I've played since November" then let me poke at your brain a little, GTA would have never been made if it hadn't of been for Miyamoto making Super Mario World for the SNES. You don't believe me? Miyamoto is heralded as a god to gamers not because of the games he's made but because of the ideaology those games contain. He constantly describes video games as an art medium, and because he believes so strongly in this ideology, when the name Mario is dropped or heard by someone 9 times out of 10, they'll begin picturing a dude in a red shirt and overalls with a hat labeled with a giant M.  GTA was a game that embodied this "seeing games as art" concept as well. 

So lets break this down, "I'm some random guy running around a city shooting people and stealing cars" was the vision. Now how do we make it fun? We make it an experience that we envisioned, which was literally being some thug in a city out to make it big for himself. They threw you into the world when the game first loaded up as some punk by a phone booth with $0, when you entered a car you had a believable radio playing with insane DJ's, all cars in the world were free gain and multiple kinds as well. But it doesn't stop there, people actually walk around the world as if they are living their lives, as well as people driving, you're being thrown into their world not the other way around. You shove someone they'll scream out "You piece of shit" or "Fuck you", you pull out a gun and start firing people beging scattering like you often see in the movies when someone rips out a gun in public, all while screaming "He's got a gun!". And that's not all, you also have people who want you to do illegal work for them that are given to the player as "missions", such as trafficking drugs, stealing special cars, robbing banks, murdering certain individuals, or having fire fights in a gang war. All of these activities give you money which you accumulate throughout your playtime in the world, indicating "You're making it big". Going from some thug with $0, to a criminal mastermind who is raking in $1,000,000 all the time. Wait there's still more, when you become a nuisance to the city, the police begin to come after you trying to take you down. The more trouble you cause the harder they come after you until either you repaint your car, you die, or they have you in custody. 

Running from the cops was fun and still is due to insane scenarios they provided.

WOO! That's a lot of gameplay, and that doesn't even scratch the surface I feel, and this is from the original GTA released circa 1998. Now I want you to just think for a second, don't answer immediately, but don't you think that's a fun concept to experience in a game world given the other games around are Crash Bandicoot and Spyro? Well people agree with you if you answered yes, because the concept took off and inspired a sequel within a year of it's release. The game raises so much controvery because its modeling the worse parts of the real world and individuals really feel as though GTA condones these types of behavior, but in reality it's a huge satire on the world we live in. While your doing all of these illegal shenanigans, your "employers" are caricatures of real world criminals, the radio station hosts are personalities from storefront preachers trying to get the listeners to send money in to praise Jesus, to satires of Howard Stern asking "The first person to bring me a their blood spattered uzi gets tickets to the ball game". The game is filled with personality and character making it as much a work of fiction as any novel, comic book, or movie. 

You didn't think that much into it did you? I certainly didn't. But now we have the basics of what makes GTA, what it is. Lets fast forward 10 years, GTA IV has been released. What makes this game worth of a 10/10 on Gamespot and multiple other gaming review sites? Well the same things that made GTA a revolutionary game. GTA IV is the realization of a decade long craft to make a complete work of fiction a person can completely immerse themselves in. Using all of the hardware capabilities possible, GTA IV provides camera shots that look like they are straight out of a well shot movie on 35mm Kodak film, hundreds of times more radio content than the original GTA, that becomes very believable. In fact the GTA IV radio has full length fake radio shows that play. The game cycles between day and night, the physics implemented are highly believable, and the inhabitants of the city like the original GTA IV are acting out their lives in the game with great great detail. People driving look as if they are going someplace, you hit them, they get pissed off for being in an accident, etc. 

Looks like a shot from Forrest Gump. GTA IV came a long way from it's ancestor.

I don't have to go into much detail about GTA IV because I'm pretty sure the majority of the people reading this have played it. But lets just compare GTA IV to it's great grand daddy for a second. GTA IV unlike the original has a storyline and characters with personalities, (something that would be hard to place with the limitation the original GTA had), and far more detail. So comparing these two shows us something, 10 years ago a few developers in a studio had a concept to immerse a player in a complete experience, applied today you have a game that literally places you into a movie of someone's life, where you the player are the lead actor. 

"What's your point?" That's what you're asking me isn't it? Well, my point is to help you look past the preconception of GTA, using the original concept as a reference. The game is something that all developers can learn from: great games are great experiences crafted by great artists. GTA wasn't some "out there" premise. It wasn't "I'm some random guy running around a city shooting people and stealing cars," like most people make it out to be, but "What would it be like to be a person with no money, no car, no house, nothing, who wants to make it big by being a criminal?" And if you think about it, take a look at Scarface and compare the similiarity in the experience you get from watching that movie and playing GTA. I feel as though GTA is in the same ranks as Mario and Donkey Kong, because though the experience each provides is different, you can't deny the experience is fun.