Before I Knew New York, I Knew Liberty City: A Retrospective on GTA IV’s Setting

Grand Theft Auto IV is celebrating its 15-year anniversary at present, April 29, 2023. Below, a New Yorker remembers how Rockstar’s imaginary model of Manhattan helped him join together with his dwelling.

Ask anybody I’ve ever proven round New York and so they’d inform you that I confer with myself as “the worst New Yorker.” That’s as a result of, for the longest time in my life, I simply did not realize it. I knew the town as a skyline I may see from my window and maps I may reference on-line, however I hardly ever went out and explored my own residence. I could not inform you up from down on the Manhattan grid and I definitely could not level you to any particular locale. Early in life, this flaw was simple to chalk as much as having a busy immigrant household that could not afford to take me out as a child. Later in life, although, when alternatives arose as a youngster, it was social anxieties and sadly discovered habits that stored me indoors and taking part in video games as a substitute. And so for the longest time in my life, I had no intimate information of or connection to the one place I’ve ever referred to as dwelling. That was, not less than, till Grand Theft Auto IV got here into my life.

15 years in the past, GTA IV upended my relationship with New York City by offering me with one. Before I knew the sights and sounds of my own residence, I knew Liberty City just like the again of my hand. Around the time of GTA IV’s launch, Rockstar went all in on more and more detailed and lifelike simulations of individuals and locations. To its credit score, GTA IV felt like sufficient of a simulacrum of New York (for the time) that I handled it as an alternative to the true factor. So, sure, reader, I first mapped out my dwelling of New York City through Liberty City. In flip, I discovered to like a spot I had by no means given a correct shot.

As a child, the town scared me. Some of my earliest reminiscences of it embody partitions of pedestrians slamming into one another at crosswalks simply due to the sheer density of individuals current. Others encompass me trying up on the impossibly tall skyscrapers and despairing at how small I was by comparison–or imagining the terrifying sight of the town under me from its highest factors. Speeding vehicles had been and stay a risk, and in a metropolis of infinitely tall buildings and lengthy streets, my greatest fear as a child was getting misplaced. One of my earliest solo expeditions into the town noticed that actual nightmare manifest. By comparability, I may afford to be fearless and thorough in my explorations of Liberty City from the security of my cousins’ bed room, which I frequented sufficient to play GTA IV typically.

Obvious points come up whenever you begin to consider my mapping out New York, although, since Liberty City is just not as one-to-one as future Rockstar settings would prove. Bohan, GTA IV’s analog for The Bronx, is criminally small for starters and Flatbush, recognized in-game as Beechwood City, is within the completely flawed a part of the sport’s rendition of Brooklyn. Whole neighborhoods are truncated down to some blocks or put in tough approximation to the place they’d be, and but a lot of New York continues to be there indirectly that I made do. BOABO, Liberty City’s equal of DUMBO, is simply due north of Downtown, a stand-in for the industrious Downtown Brooklyn, which tracks in actuality. I discovered the place to put neighborhoods like Red Hook, which you start the sport in, and have become accustomed to elements of city I would not discover until faculty and maturity. Prior to my later high-school years, I hardly ever stepped foot in Manhattan, however I was a daily in Algonquin storefronts and eating places in GTA IV. And in contrast to different elements of the map, it is largely laid out virtually precisely like its inspiration, although Middle Park is a bit of too far uptown to be a real substitute for Central Park.

Most importantly to me, I noticed mission buildings all through GTA IV’s metropolis simply months after me and my household moved into one ourselves. It’s one of many first instances I can keep in mind ever seeing mission buildings in a sport. While no singular illustration of New York will ever be more true than one other, most media had led me to know my dwelling because the glamor of the massive metropolis, somewhat than the grime of the truth in most different locations or the juxtaposition of the 2. Prior to GTA IV and the wave of gentrification that’d quickly change the town, a lot of New York exterior of Manhattan was an afterthought to of us trying from the skin in. But in GTA IV’s eyes, we had been equally worthy of being part of the larger image. It was an outline that felt trustworthy, and that meant one thing to me–and it nonetheless does. And alongside the way in which, my efforts labored and GTA IV demystified the town for me, or not less than made sufficient sense of it for me to confidently discover it and uncover its different secrets and techniques and delights.

What’s most fascinating to me in my reflection of GTA IV is not how a lot of the town I know and confidently discover nowadays because of it, however how a lot it is now a snapshot of a spot that does not completely exist anymore. As a lot as the sport knowledgeable me of the New York City of the mid-to-late aughts, it is unrecognizable in spots now. DUMBO, then a relative piece of crap as a consequence of its varied deserted industrial buildings, has been closely developed since, first housing a burgeoning artwork scene earlier than transitioning to tech startups and high-end residentials which might be utterly at odds with the rundown feeling of GTA IV’s equal. That’s as a result of so many deserted buildings and warehouses of the time received retrofitted into high-end dwelling across the flip of the last decade to satisfy the calls for of gentrifiers within the 2010s. Similarly, East Island City would not mirror how astronomically upscale Long Island City has grow to be within the final decade, to the purpose that Amazon was banking on constructing a headquarters there some years in the past that may’ve pushed out no matter low-income households had been left within the space. As a outcome, GTA IV is that this odd glimpse at a pre-recession and gentrification New York City, a spot I’ve received a faint reminiscence of nowadays.

What’s even funnier to me about how dated GTA IV’s metropolis feels is what would not make the lower in its model of Liberty City and the way clearly it factors to the period by which this sport was made. Williamsburg, the neighborhood I grew up in most of my life, is nowhere within the sport, an oversight that would solely be made earlier than the 2010s and the explosion of change that’d rework the neighborhood right into a parody of itself and the hub of Brooklyn. GTA has by no means been shy about who and what it satirizes, with GTA V taking specific intention at hipsters and techies on the opposite coast again in 2013. At the identical time, although, each of these teams had been additionally encroaching on Williamsburg and elements of Bushwick, the latter of which not less than exists in elements of Schottler in-game. One imagines a contemporary Liberty City making them the most important respective part of Broker, filling the streets with oddly dressed hipsters saying essentially the most pretentious stuff you’ve got ever heard on the way in which to the closest cafe as a form of toothless jab on the populace, however because it stands, it is nowhere in sight. That is not to sentence Rockstar for not being prescient sufficient to jot down them in, however a humorous statement contemplating the meteoric rise of both neighborhood within the ensuing years. So a lot of what I’ve grown to learn about New York within the years since GTA IV stuffed within the blanks is not accounted for, making it an odd tribute to a spot I solely fleetingly knew simply earlier than it slipped away from me.

Nonetheless, essentially the most rewarding factor about this journey down reminiscence lane although has been coming again to the sport all these years later and choosing it aside in a manner not motivated by spite however out of affection. Like how I cannot go to Grand Army Plaza within the sport with out lamenting that the Central Library is on the utterly flawed aspect of the arch, or the dearth of the Eastern Parkway, the place I’ve loved many refreshing walks and seen joggers and their cute canines through the years. While I do not owe all my information of the town to GTA IV, it is laborious to disclaim its position as a foundational side for why I realize it in addition to I do now. And although there is a bitterness to how a lot of this sport’s setting has slipped away from me, I’m glad it not less than exists as a time capsule of it. So as I forge forward in life, and because the world round me continues to vary, I intend to maintain holding onto GTA IV as a memento of the primary place I ever cherished.