Games With Grey

The Lost and Damned’s central narrative is decidedly character-driven in nature; the cast of characters is exhaustive and diverse – see most notably the player character, Johnny Klebitz, a figure defined by his complexity, a complexity which serves a distinguishing function – he is both alike and unlike the various other members of the Lost M.C., a motorcycle club of some import in the returning Liberty City, Johnny’s playground of sorts. Some half a dozen major, named characters are introduced as belonging to this Club, too, specifically its Alderney branch, the branch Johnny fiercely devotes himself too and passionately embraces. Near universally, these supporting characters are animated by brashness, oftentimes acting in a spontaneous and dangerously thoughtless manner, occasionally delighting in violence, its infliction. Johnny, unique Johnny, is a neat admixture of passion and restraint – his distinguishments again emerge, intensify; he is not necessarily above them. But he is set apart from them. But even with this ample cautiousness – and by extension logicalness – Johnny also executes villainous deeds, bloodying his hands just as his figurative brothers bloody their own; darkness emerges, and fast, and sustained.

Collectively, violence defines the Lost, though one crucial, indestructible unifier exists – each individual character, even the most narratively inconsequential, displays profound vulnerability. In efforts to combat such vulnerability and obtain self-assured resolve, an almost mutualistic relationship develops between the club members. See especially Billy Grey, president of the Lost in Alderney, and newly released from prison in the narrative’s opening. Friction abounds from the first, and Billy ultimately becomes greatest antagonist, his corrupt tyrannicalness prompting a civil of sorts within the Lost’s ranks; figurative brothers turn on figurative brothers, while brothers murder brothers, primarily at the instigation of Billy Grey, a character reinprisoned as the narrative continues, though not outright destroyed by that imprisonment. He has his supporters in and out, while Johnny has his own. The two factions inevitably come to literal blows; destruction consumes all. Matters intensify; Johnny becomes president, roaring and eager to dismantle Billy Grey’s assembled army, an army still defined by unswerving and unquestioning allegiance. The leader’s forces are weakened, and the leader himself is assaulted, as Johnny orchestrates an attack on the imposing, sprawling prison presently containing corrupt Billy Grey. The narrative terminates with his concerted murder.   

This core narrative is, then, poignant and engaging, its character-driven nature directly stirring emotions; player pathos is stimulated, while manifold human questions are advanced – Rockstar evinced especial interest in its characters’ psychological attributes. See most obviously Johnny Klebitz himself, the sense of fraternity which develops between him and his fellow motorcyclists, a fraternity perhaps attached to loneliness. Had Johnny not thrown in his lot with the Lost, had he not become initially subservient to Billy Grey, Johnny’s breast should be darkened with unending sorrow; the Lost literally save poor yet powerful Johnny Klebitz. And Johnny is powerful, though still this power’s existence does not stave off the demoralizing attributes necessarily accompanying that aloneness, that fear of aloneness. In many crucial ways, Johnny absolutely anchors the narrative, becomes a conduit for Rockstar’s overall ambitions – see again the fixation with emotion and suffering, with aloneness and purposefulness, two fiercely clashing entities, but entities directly interrogated as the narrative winds ever onwards, as Johnny’s own journey progresses ever onwards; his dynamism is marked, memorable.

Suitably, then, the entire narrative is consistently bleak, is frequently exhausting, even as the developers’ trademark humor sees inevitable insertion, all for levity’s sake, the disruption of tension. Here, though, stock, obnoxious comedic relief is mostly absent – the expansion completely lacks, say, a bumbling, idiotic Roman Bellic or the steroid-fueled Brucie found in the base game. Johnny is occasionally comedic – though this oftentimes seems unintentional and occasionally very forced – though whatever brightness emerges, it is fast and totally consumed by a voracious sea of darkness; the tone, so bleak, is masterful, and the developers were unflinching in their depictions of this pervasive bleakness and this pervasive vileness. Consider especially Ashely, Johnny’s love interest, a figure whose vulnerabilities match – exceed – the vulnerabilities evinced in all of the other supporting characters. For Ashley is a drug addict, her life consumed by her addiction. This depiction is necessarily paradoxical, as the player is forced into an interpretative role, asking whether her human goodness, which does exist, washes away her darkness, which exists in even greater measure, as needle is to put to vein with fair, insufferable regularity. Whichever way one leans on this good / bad warfare, Ashley’s constant discourses with Johnny, the promises of lasting sobriety which she thrusts upon him, morph her into a tragic and sympathetic figure. But tragicalness does not instantly equate to reduced culpability, and indeed Ashley shows darkness as she acts upon and exploits Johnny Klebitz, a figure of fair patience who regards Ahsley with swelling empathy and sincerity, whereas so many other individuals would dismiss her, her flaws, and her addictions outright, aloofly and coldly.

But not so for kindly and endearing Johnny Klebitz, who becomes a hero of a sort, a figure willing to push back against the darkness – read Billy Grey but also Ashley and the drugs which destroy her – for the benefit of his countrymen, his brothers in arms – his fellow members in the Lost M.C. Some slight narrative blemishes inevitably emerge, however, many revolving around the cast of recurring characters. Niko Bellic sees brief inclusion, while Johnny becomes messenger boy for the returning Elizabeta, powerful drug-lord and one of fair reach and influence. Luis Lopez is here, as is Ray Boccino, a figure involved in the Liberty City mafia, overseeing countless barbarisms. Foundationally, none of these characters are totally disinteresting or worthy of outright dismissal, but their portrayals, their inclusions, are far less impactful in that the player of the base Grand Theft Auto IV has some insight into their characters and their characterizations; novelness is comparatively low. This lowness only enhances the compellingness defining the Lost collectively, and the wholly new characters inject life into the narrative, bolstering tonal complexity and ensuring the narrative claims its own distinct identity.    

Just as the expansion inherits characters from the base game, it also inherits many of the base game’s problems, repetition foremost among them. Essentially every mission plays out in the same fashion – watch a (typically) cinematic cutscene; drive to some location; and then either engage in an on-foot shootout, or remain in a vehicle and engage in vehicular combat. Permutations to this core formula are slight, and the monotonousness which defines this structure damages the experience considerably, results in damning predictability – rare are the surprises in The Lost and Damned, at least outside of the affecting and demoralizing narrative. This predictability is egregious, to be sure, though overall disaster is staved off owing to the rewarding gameplay systems, whether speaking of shooting or driving, the gameplay’s two central pillars – the expansion is a blast to play, whether exchanging bullets with one of the Lost’s rival groups, or simply engaging in unchallenged exploration, zipping down Liberty City streets in car, on motorbike, or motorcycle, these latter two vehicle classes subject to some slight alterations, actually being made more forgiving and intuitive to pilot, fitting when considering the ample amount of time spent upon such constructions; they are mandated for essentially all missions which entail the Lost’s participation in some fashion or other.

And the driving is intuitive, is frequently exhilarating, with subtle yet impactful motion blur, itself contributing cinematicness to the gameplay, which rivals the narrative’s cinematicness. Clever sound design increases this cinematicness, and the robust radio systems serve a wonderful, immersive, grounding function, situating the narrative in time. Gunplay itself has many cinematic aspirations, too, though the expansion is a dull cover-shooter at heart; essentially any obstacle can be clung to, used as protective aegis where the player can safely assess the foes, plot against them. A sort of pop up / retreat, pop up / retreat approach does emerge here, logical when considering this design philosophy is a mainstay of the third person, cover-shooter genre, one which incentivizes – sometimes mandates – a more cautious gameplay stance, the thought being that protracted overexposure is worthy of player punishment, in these precise instances death. Given this simplicity and firm generic adherence, superficially, gunplay is automated in nature, the excessively generous lock-on feature almost trivializing gameplay, as all the player need do is hold down the left trigger and then wait as Johnny’s equipped weapon lets forth its ammunition with precision accuracy; player skill here is nonexistent, is completely unnecessary; stick to cover and slaughter the opposition with little direct action. But again, all of these observations are just that – superficial. One clever gameplay wrinkle combats this superficialness – a manual aiming feature. If the trigger is only depressed halfway, the player is provided greater control in aiming. Mastery of this system results in a more rewarding gameplay experience, for it is a complete rejection of that damning automatedness.

All of these statements could be applied to the base Grand Theft Auto IV, of course, and the expansion could be faltered for its conservatism in gameplay, the scant number of departures and innovations. Outside of the revised motorbike controls, for instance, the only other gameplay alterations revolve around inclusions, as a handful of new weapons are purchasable from underground gun stores, or are lootable, seizeable from the corpses of fallen foes ready to be wielded. None of these objects – see a grenade launcher, a sawed-off shotgun, pipe bombs, an automatic shotgun, and so on – are revolutionary, though they do bolster somewhat player flexibilities in combat, the automatic shotgun being especially destructive, primarily in close-range engagements, which are actually rather numerous; many gunfights erupt in, say, some claustrophobic apartment hallways, whose tightness directly enhances player vulnerability, which further necessitates a cautious approach – difficulty overflows in these sequences, wherein death is an actual, looming menace. And the expansion can be difficult, opportunities for health restoration being slight while tackling a mission. Death is ever a tangibility, and while Johnny can gun down innumerable opposition – see a mission aboard a motorbike, where Johnny wields that overpowered, automatic shotgun, blasting dozens of his pursuers, while a companion steers the motorbike this way and that. While he engages in these bloodbaths, gameplay generally reflects Johnny’s defining humanness; here is no immortal or a creature immune to pain, death. And immortality’s commanding rejection only bolsters Johnny’s endearing attributes. Cleverly, too, the developers minimized the frustration formerly accompanying mission failure in the base game, primarily by including a checkpoint system. Rather than potentially losing some fifteen or twenty minutes after failure in a particularly involved and challenging mission, in The Lost and Damned comparatively little progress is ever washed away, meaning the player can jump back into the fray almost immediately. This one key inclusion fundamentally improves the experience, largely by preserving pacing, which was subject to erosion in the base game, the penalties for mission failure there being exaggerated in intensity. But save for this inclusion a few new weapons’ introduction, refined motorcycle driving controls, and a checkpoint system’s inclusion, gameplay ambitions are lacking – conservativism again emerges, and the entire experience is sharpy divided; the gameplay’s unambitiousness clashes with the narrative’s great ambitiousness. Overambitious or underambitious, The Lost and Damned is a consistent delight to play.     

But The Lost and Damned’s gameplay is not without its blemishes; some wavering exists, intimately connected to repetition. Outside of the central narrative and the general impulses for exploration which the masterful Liberty City evokes within any given player’s breast, truly meaningful secondary content is essentially absent, being divided into two distinct channels and two distinct channels alone – motorcycle races and combat scenarios with rival bikers which inevitably transpire while on those ubiquitous motorcycles, unspoken and unspeaking characters in their own right, fostering fraternity, forming that unifying motorcycle culture. Foundationally, these missions are sound, for foundationally Grand Theft Auto IV was sound. But in a major failing, these missions are far overabundant, their overabundance prompting tedium, which is exacerbated further still by the commanding formulaicness of this secondary content. Consider the motorcycle races, for instance, which number roughly twenty-five in total. The race’s location may change somewhat, but apart from this shifting the first race is essentially identical to the twenty-fifth race – originality further suffers, a particularly pained suffering. True, Rockstar incorporated some aspects of vehicular combat in these races, in that Johnny is provided a baseball bat which can throw the opposition off course, but this is a slight, mostly inconsequential inclusion. In theory, it is sound. In practice it is pointless, owing to the races’ general easiness; it is easy, intuitive, to gain a tremendous lead almost from the first; distance from the opponents expands and expands; the baseball goes unused, meaning potentialities for novelness are squandered; the implementation is pointless. In a very frustrating turn, then, these missions are terriblyunexciting and terribly repetitive. The races do serve a clever if unintended narrative function, true, in that they communicate to the player much; motorcycles are key to these individuals’ existence; the Lost – or any of the other motorcycle clubs in Liberty City and elsewhere – cannot possibly be divided from their bikes, for they are their bikes, empowered by them, reassured by them and comforted by them. This train of thought extends to the second and only other real form of secondary gameplay – gang wars. Predictably, deviations are lacking – drive here, shoot this individual or cluster of individuals, and then promptly ride off into the sunset. True, some of the antagonistic may flee by vehicle, while others may dig in and take to cover, anticipating Johnny’s advance, the Lost’s advance, though diversity is lacking. These missions also suffer the same flaw as the races – they are overwhelming numerically. Were their frequency lessened, were their gameplay complexity enhanced directly alongside that lessening and diminishment, the experience would soar; the gang wars are defined by potential, but they are, ultimately, another casualty of the experience’s overall safeness and its fear of newness.  

Johnny’s narrative rejects the epicness defining Niko Bellic’s narrative; both figures undergo an odyssey of self-discovery, to be sure, though Johnny’s tale rejects all instances of glamor, while Niko was periodically engrossed in glamor, serving this affluent client-criminal and then that affluent client-criminal; decadence has its place in Grand Theft Auto IV. It is essentially absent here. Ambitions are skewed, while differing subject matters are interrogated and developed. The Lost and Damned’s more restrained narrative results in a hyperfocusedness completely lacking in the sprawling base game, which saw dozens of characters coming and going, some leaving no consequential marker on the narrative, existing as cheap comic relief or as vessel for Rockstar’s witty writing. The expansion’s hyperfocusedness, then, prompts considerable uniqueness, as does the pervasive grittiness, violence’s embrace and the embracing of such bleak themes as drug addition, a theme central to the narrative – see especially Ashley, but also by extension many members of the Lost, including despotic Billy Grey.   

Further stumblings arise, though. The greatest failing is related to exploration; rather than featuring gated boroughs – as GTA IV did – now all areas of Liberty City are explorable from the first. This design decision diminishes the excitement of exploration and the joys of discovery, which elsewhere existed in fair abundance. In GTA IV, unlocking, say, Algonquin, brought with it a rush of excitement, as the player is finally permitted to explore that island of skyscrapers, beautiful skyscrapers visible always in the slummy streets of Broker or Bohan. None of this applies here; excitement diminishes. Worse still, exploration is not only unrewarded, but is ultimately unnecessary, in that vast swathes of Liberty City are largely untouched as the narrative progresses ever onward, clashing greatly with the base game which emphasized all of the city’s vastness. The starting borough of Alderney, meanwhile, is arguably the least exciting of all collected boroughs, and tragically a vast portion of the narrative unfolds therein, for the Lost’s central clubhouse is there situated. The expansion’s datedness is palpable, too, with clunky movement and little emphasis ever placed upon verticality, clashing greatly with an industry which now valorizes seamless and intuitive traversal systems (though this complaint is certainly leverageable towards the core game). This pervasive clunkiness necessarily attracts players towards vehicles – most strongly motorcycles. And so the player mounts them, a traditionally exhilarating act, as street after street is zipped by; cinematicness erupts. But on-foot traversal brings its own delights, too, fosters a sharp sense of immersion; Liberty City’s strange charms, its strange darknesses, are more easily and intimately felt outside of vehicles, for outside the city seems larger. And this Liberty City remains a major technical and creative achievement, brimming with atmosphere. Having an additional reason to explore this map – even if only in parts – is an exciting prospect, and accordingly The Lost and Damned is exciting, permitting the player to invest some ten or fifteen additional hours into this spectacular gameworld. This magicalness is wonderfully complemented by a masterful narrative, the expansion’s greatest achievement, everything anchored by resolute yet suffering Johnny Klebitz. The narrative loses its way as characters like Elizabeta are emphasized, but Johnny’s presence and actions always serve a redirecting function, ensuring poignancy is never forgotten, only lost temporarily.