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‘Grand Theft Auto IV’ exploits immigration issue for more shoot-’em-up fun

Carolyn Hileman - The Voice* | April 29, 2008 

BY MISHA DAVENPORT Staff Reporter
The “Grand Theft Auto” series has always featured a violent and gritty world that adult gamers happily plunge into again and again. But the latest entry in the franchise just might make you think a bit in between the blood and violence.

With only a few hours of game play before my deadline, I can say without hesitation that Rockstar Games, the publisher of the series, has again raised the bar on what we can expect out of video games. “Grand Theft Auto IV” is a modern masterpiece that attempts to address what it means to be an American in a post-9/11 world.

The script by Rockstar founder Dan Houser distills and condenses both our hopes and fears during these confusing times as it captures the seedy underbelly of a major city. The game shares much in common with E.L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime. In that book, a Jewish immigrant family finds the turn-of-the-century tenements of New York to be a harsh place. A hundred years later, immigrants are still drawn to this country by the allure of freedom; but the good life of the “American Dream” dissipates when you wake to the bitter reality of life in a big city.

“GTA IV” follows Niko Bellic, an illegal immigrant from an unnamed eastern European country who is trying to escape the horrors of the Bosnian war by starting over in Liberty City (the game’s fictionalized version of New York). He no sooner meets his cousin Roman on the docks when he realizes the good life promised to him was a lie, his cousin’s letters about the good life mere exaggerations.

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