Everything about Grand Theft Auto Vice City totally explained
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is a sandbox-style action-adventure computer and video game designed by Rockstar North (formerly DMA Design) and published by Rockstar Games. It is the second 3D game in the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise and fourth original title overall. It debuted in North America on October 27, 2002, for the PlayStation 2 and quickly became the best-selling video game for that year. As of July 2006, Vice City
was, in the American market, the best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. Vice City
also appeared on Japanese magazine Famitsu's readers' list of all-time favorite 100 videogames in 2006. Following this success,
Vice City saw releases in
Europe,
Australia and
Japan, and became available on the
PC.
Rockstar Vienna also packaged the game with its predecessor,
Grand Theft Auto III, and sold it as for the
Xbox.
Vice City was succeeded by and preceded by
Grand Theft Auto III.
Vice City draws much of its inspiration from 1980s American culture. Set in 1986, the story revolves around
Mafia member
Tommy Vercetti, who was recently released from prison. After being involved in a drug deal gone wrong, Tommy is forced to seek out those responsible. Throughout the game, Tommy forges out a criminal empire in
Vice City, gradually obtaining contacts, running businesses and seizing power from the other criminal organizations present in the city.
The game uses a tweaked version of the game engine used in
Grand Theft Auto III and similarly presents a huge cityscape, fully populated with buildings (from hotels to skyscrapers), vehicles (cars, motorcycles, boats, helicopters) and people to explore.
Vice City's setting is also revisited in, which serves as a
prequel to events in
Vice City.
Setting
The game is set in fictional
Vice City, which is based on
Miami, Florida. The game's look, particularly the clothing and vehicles, reflect (and sometimes parody) its
1986 setting (with the packaging and artwork in particular owing a great debt to 1980s artist
Patrick Nagel). In contrast to the gritty urbanism of
Grand Theft Auto III's
Liberty City, Vice City appears (mostly) clean and upscale, with golden beaches, waving
palm trees, and vivid sunsets.
Plot
The player takes on the role of
Tommy Vercetti, a
Mafia hitman just released from prison after serving 15 years for eleven contract killings. The Mafia family for whom he used to work, the
Forellis, fears that Tommy's presence in Liberty City will heighten tensions and bring unwanted attention upon their criminal activities. To prevent this, they ostensibly "promote" Tommy and send him to Vice City to act as their buyer for a series of
cocaine deals. During Tommy's first meeting with the drug dealers, an ambush results in the death of Tommy's bodyguards and one of the cocaine dealers,
Victor Vance. Tommy narrowly escapes with his life, but he loses both the Forelli's money and the cocaine.
Tasked by Sonny Forelli with retrieving the money and cocaine and killing whoever was responsible for the ambush, Tommy sets up permanent residence in a beach front hotel. He makes contact with the Forellis only other connection in Vice City, a corrupt lawyer named
Ken Rosenberg, who, upon hearing of the ambush, has holed himself up in his office and begun popping
stimulants for fear of being killed in his sleep. Rosenberg nonetheless proves to be a vital connection. Through him, Tommy starts working with
Colonel Cortez, who offers to find who organized the ambush. While working for Cortez, Tommy meets
Lance Vance—the brother of Victor Vance—and together they form a partnership with
Ricardo Diaz, a Cuban crime lord and Vice City's most powerful mobster. After working with Diaz in certain assignments, Cortez informs Tommy that he's learned Diaz was the one who organized the ambush. Tommy and Lance plan to take Diaz out together. However, Lance tries to do the job himself, to avenge his brother's death. He is captured and tortured by Diaz, but Tommy comes to his rescue. After helping Cortez escape from the French government, Lance and Tommy set off to kill Diaz. Tommy and Lance storm Diaz's mansion, take out his men, and kill him in his office.
With Diaz dead, his empire quickly crumbles. Tommy and Lance personally take over all of Diaz's old businesses, not only becoming Vice City's cocaine kingpins, but also seizing the assets of several near-bankrupted companies. Among those businesses are the Interglobal Films Studio run by, the Malibu Club, Vice City Print Works, Kaufman Cabs Agency, Vice City Harbor, and 's Cherry Popper Ice Cream Factory. They also gain favor from heavy metal band
Love Fist, the
Cuban and
Biker gangs, and
Avery Carrington's real estate enterprise.
All of these properties and businesses are acquired with no assistance from the Forelli family. Instead, Tommy becomes the head of his own organization, the
Vercetti Gang. The more powerful and rich Tommy and Lance become, however, the more Lance begins to exhibit
paranoid and
sociopathic behaviors, to the point that he begins to physically abuse his own bodyguards and constantly calls Tommy in states of hysteria.
Eventually, the Forellis find out that Tommy has taken over crime in Vice City without sending a cut to the don as required. The Forellis send collectors to force money out of Tommy's assets, but Tommy murders them. An angered Sonny Forelli arrives in Vice City with a small army of mafiosi and street thugs, intent on wiping out Tommy once and for all. When Sonny and his henchmen arrive at Vercetti Estate, Tommy attempts to bribe them with counterfit money he made with . However, Lance, having come to resent Tommy's substantial share of their profits, betrays Tommy and allies himself with the Forellis. In the game's climax -- a
pastiche on the end of the
Brian De Palma film
Scarface -- Lance, Sonny, and Sonny's henchmen raid Tommy's mansion. Tommy kills Lance in a
firefight on the mansion's roof. Tommy then storms back downstairs where he faces off with Sonny. Sonny reveals he's the one who set Tommy up and had him kill the eleven men who were expecting him. Tommy faces off against Sonny, eventually killing him as well. His enemies vanquished, Tommy establishes himself as the undisputed crime kingpin of Vice City, with Ken Rosenberg as his right-hand-man.
Themes and inspiration
Many themes are borrowed from the films
Scarface and
Carlito's Way, along with the hit 1980s television series
Miami Vice.
Vice City also parodies and pays tribute to much of 1980s culture in the cars, music, fashion, landmarks, and characters featured in the game. After much advertisement of the game, the song "
I Ran (So Far Away)" by
A Flock of Seagulls became the known signature theme of the game.
opulent mansion, Club Malibu, and the climactic battle which takes place in it at the game's end, are very similar to their counterparts in
Scarface. Another reference is the game's overall storyline, as it's highly similar to the film, as is the design of the final mission. There are also more subtle references, such as a hidden apartment room with blood on the bathroom walls and a chainsaw (in a nod to the film's "chainsaw torture" scene). Best Action Adventure Game on PlayStation 2, Game of the Year on PlayStation 2
|-
||
IGN's Best of 2002
|Best Adventure Game for PlayStation 2 (Editor's Choice and Reader's Choice), Special Achievement for Sound (Reader's Choice), Best Game of the Year for PlayStation 2 (Editor's Choice and Reader's Choice)
|-
|}
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released to extremely positive reviews from critics and fans alike. The game received ratings of 9.7/10 from
IGN, 9.6/10 from
GameSpot, 5/5 from
GamePro, and 10/10 from
Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine. The game has a score of 95 out of 100 on the review compiling website
Metacritic making
Vice City the sixth highest rated PlayStation 2 game on the site. Most critics praised the game for its open-ended action and entertaining re-creation of 1980s culture.
As of
September 25,
2007,
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is the third
best-selling video game in the United States with 6.8 million copies sold, ahead of its predecessor,
Grand Theft Auto III, and behind its successor,, according to the
NPD Group. As of
September 26,
2007,
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has sold 15 million units according to
Take-Two Interactive. As of
March 26 2008,
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has sold 17.5 million units according to Take-Two Interactive.
Controversy
Like
Grand Theft Auto III,
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has been labeled as violent and sexually explicit by many
special interest groups, and is considered highly
controversial. Some suggest that parental supervision is necessary when young people play this game, since children were never the game's intended audience. The
ESRB rated this game "M" for
Mature. In
Australia, it was slightly modified to comply with current Australian censorship laws; the ability to pick-up
prostitutes was disabled, allowing the game to be given an MA15+ rating by the
OFLC. In the UK,
Vice City received an "
18" certificate from the
BBFC.
In November 2003,
Cuban and
Haitian groups in
Florida targeted the title. They accused the game of inviting people to harm immigrants from those two nations. The groups' claims of racism and incitement to genocide attracted a good deal of public attention towards
Vice City. Rockstar Games issued a press release stating that they understood the concern of Cubans and Haitians, but also believed those groups were blowing the issue out of proportion. Under further pressure, including threats from
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to "do everything we possibly can" if Rockstar didn't comply, Take-Two (the game's publisher) did agree to remove several lines of dialogue. This seems to have largely satisfied the groups who raised the complaints, although the case was then referred to a
state court, downgraded from the initial decision to refer the case to a
federal court. In 2004, a new version of the game was released, removing and changing those lines of dialogue.
In February 2005, a
lawsuit was brought upon the makers and distributors of the
Grand Theft Auto series claiming the games caused a teenager to shoot and kill three members of the Alabama police force. The shooting took place in June 2003 when Devin Moore, 17 years old at the time, was brought in for questioning to a Fayette police station regarding a stolen vehicle. Moore then grabbed a pistol from one of the police officers and shot and killed him along with another officer and dispatcher before fleeing in a police car. One of Moore's attorneys, Jack Thompson, claimed it was GTA's graphic nature - with his constant playing time - that caused Moore to commit the murders, and Moore's family agrees. Damages are being sought from the
Jasper branches of
GameStop and
Wal-Mart, the stores from which
GTA III and
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, respectively, were purchased and also from the games' publisher
Take-Two Interactive, and the
PlayStation 2 manufacturer
Sony Computer Entertainment. The case is currently being heard by the same judge who presided over Moore's criminal trial, in which he was sentenced to death for his actions.
In September 2006,
Jack Thompson brought another lawsuit, claiming that
Cody Posey played the game obsessively before murdering his father, stepmother, and stepsister on a ranch in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. The suit was filed on behalf of the victims' families. During the criminal trial, Posey's defense team argued he was abused by his father, and tormented by his stepmother. Posey was also taking
Zoloft at the time of the killings. The suit alleged that were it not for his obsessive playing of
Vice City, the murders wouldn't have taken place. Named in the suit were Cody Posey, Rockstar Games, Take-Two Interactive, and Sony. The suit asked for US$600 million in damages.
Further Information
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