End of the story feels underwhelming
Went back and played GTA 4 as I never actually finished it back in the day and I feel like the end of the story is a little lack luster. Don’t get me wrong I love most of the characters especially Niko as a whole he may be one of my favorite Rockstar protagonists, also I truly hate the villains (mainly Dimitri) but I feel like the ending mission is redundant or like watered down maybe.
When Niko comes to Liberty City he has an underlying mission, it’s to start a new life but also he seeks to confront the person who betrayed him, and in his words, the man that ruined his life years ago. Of course you go through the usual Rockstar game grind of zero to hero meeting all sorts of random people that send you off on messy jobs just for some cash to eventually get you information to find this enemy of yours.
After doing so you finally find the man youve been looking for (after confronting the first guy you thought and realizing he’s to much of a rainbow person to do something like that) and you finally realize the guy who betrayed you is just a weak and feeble lowlife scumbag who hardly even remembers you so you can either kill him or walk away which I chose the latter. Now I understand the sentiment here in the story is to point out Niko’s quest for revenge in and of itself was redundant, fruitless, and hollow which in the grand scheme I think is a good loop of a story.
However here at this point is where I start to question and criticize the storytelling. After this interaction with this huge moment that your character spent years trying to accomplish you just go on finishing some missions for the mafia which you just kind of clumsily fell into their circle in the first place. Now I chose the Revenge route ending as I could not stand Dimitri and wanted to see this guy go away so maybe that effects my experience a little bit but after killing him Kate a love interest that felt to me at least like it was inserted as that role rather than organically building it, gets killed and you then make a final revenge chase once again and kill a mob boss that hardly carries weight in the overall story.
Again I understand that Revenge is a common theme in the story and that the point being shown in Nikos story is revenge is hollow and meaningless but I feel as though the final mission had way less stake than it could have. Going on a crazy chase to kill a guy that was only really like a spec within the whole story (not mention the mafia families was a little convoluted for me as I really didn’t understand the hierarchy of the different families or who was who) to redeem the death of a character that sort of felt forced in the first place just felt sort of weak. Maybe if I chose the deal and Roman died instead and I killed Dimitri it would feel different but I’m not really sure.
I’ll say I did barrel through the story and I didn’t really take time to get immersed in the game like players probably did when it first came out. That being said I truly did love the game despite it being almost 20 years old just wish the ending hit a little harder for me.