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...right: it is interesting. It's one of the enduring paradoxes of the Grand Theft Auto games - or maybe the paradox lies in the culture around them? - that people who don't play them think of them as the epitome of mindless virtual violence, whereas in fact they are, with each installment, more and more radical and sophisticated experiments in storytelling. Depending on whether or not you're a gamer, this statement is either preposterous or so staggeringly obvious that it's almost not worth making. (See the top 10 video games...
...Grand Theft Auto IV wasn't even the most commercial entertainment option on the bill. As Dan Houser, one of the prime movers behind the Grand Theft Auto series, points out, the game opened opposite Speed Racer and Iron Man. "I thought that was an interesting moment," says Houser, an affable, shaved-headed Londoner who talks so quickly that he's almost untranscribable. "You have a video game about an immigrant discovering himself and losing himself in America - and that's the video game - and then the movies are about a superhero in a metal suit and a car based...
Grand Theft Auto IV tells the story of Niko, a haunted veteran of an unspecified, nameless East European conflict who washes up in Liberty City looking for a new life. (Liberty City is, like Gotham, a darker version of New York City, with satirical flourishes. The Statue of Liberty has been replaced by the Statue of Happiness, which holds aloft a coffee cup instead of a torch.) Over the course of the game, Niko slugs, shoots and carjacks his way up (or maybe down) the ladder of the criminal underworld. As he does so, he gradually realizes that...
...game's newest installment, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, which will be released on Feb. 17, Houser and his team have ratcheted up the complexity even further. Instead of extending Niko's story laterally by adding a straight-up sequel, they're drilling down into it vertically: they picked a minor character from Liberty City, a biker named Johnny, and created a story around him that takes place simultaneously with Niko's, weaving across and over and through...
...billion each to Peugeot Citroën and Renault in exchange for promises that the companies won't enact layoffs in France. The proposal drew charges of protectionism from other E.U. members, who say the plan could force the carmakers to cut workers in other countries. Other recent E.U. auto-assistance deals...