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GTA 4's vigilante missions feel cursed (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by doublepepperoni@hexbear.net to c/games@hexbear.net

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I'm still playing GTA 4 and the vigilante missions come across a bit questionable in 2025. In GTA 4, when you're driving any police vehicle you can access the onboard police computer and either do repeating missions where you kill generic criminal NPCs or tick off a list of Liberty City's most wanted criminals. Most of them basically just boil down to you pulling up somewhere in a cop car and eliminating black and brown people (though sometimes you get to shoot motor cycle gangs and Italian goombas)

As I was running over Spanish-speaking gangsters that were fleeing on foot in the militarised police Hummer belonging to the GTA universe's version of ICE I had stolen I felt like I was stuck in some Grok-generated AI video on the White House's Twitter account

It's even worse because in GTA 4, most NPCs don't die outright unless you kill them with a headshot, and instead they go curl up into an extended dying state where they slowly bleed out while they moan and beg for mercy. This doesn't count as a kill for these missions, so most of them end with you going around and executing people as they lie on the ground

It's all just throwaway extra content and not functionally different from the shit you do normally in the game's missions but something about the cop framing makes it feel much ickier than murdering people for Russian mobsters or Puerto Rican coke dealers

Something tells me we won't be seeing these missions return in GTA 6

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[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 10 points 3 months ago (1 children)

technically speaking, vigilantes are criminals. i don't think the game is saying, "getting in a law enforcement vehicle and pressing R3 morally justifies what you're about to do". it's more like, you're activating the "do reactionary murder missions for cash."

this is a game series where, if you're wanted for anything, including bumping into a cop car, the cops try to force your vehicle off the road with no regard for public safety and unload firearms at you even if you're unarmed with your back to them and there are civilians around. the game generally presents US law enforcement as trigger happy, racists, incompetent, and corrupt from top to bottom, so i don't follow the logic that ostensibly doing their dirty work in side missions is being endorsed as good or ethical. i've always interpreted the game series as deeply satirical of US institutions like the military, policing, and their abject failure to mitigate poverty or promote public safety.

as far as i recall, the vigilante missions first appeared in Vice City (though they could have been in GTA3, but i believe VC was the first to have a significant reward) and were optional, but required for 100% completion. once you advanced to a certain level in them, it was all heavily armed mercenaries in multi-armored car convoys so it was basically impossible to do the 20-in-a-row (or whatever) without the Hunter. which, really gives it away that the vigilante missions purpose is to be a maximum collateral damage killer.

[–] doublepepperoni@hexbear.net 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm not saying the vigilante missions are intended to be unironic copaganda. They just end up feeling kind of iffy looking back on them almost 20 years later, probably mostly unintentionally- it doesn't seem like Rockstar put too much thought into them.

GTA Online had the bounty hunter expansion which is essentially the same concept but done in a way where it makes a bit more sense in the context of a GTA game

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago

What do you mean iffy? The cops are evil and you're volunteering to be their dog.