Twenty-one days at sea — the grey and obese ghosts of floating cities are buzzing in the night for a long time. The voyage ends, the diamonds are hidden, and he takes to the streets of the city and hears the dialects that surrounded him during the war. The passengers look away and no one is interested in what brought the others here. A wanderer among wanderers sets foot on the “land of opportunities”.
He's walking through wild streets, smelling of burnt gasoline and gunpowder in the air. Like restless souls, prostitutes and hot dog sellers call him out. Both promise to nourish the flesh. A prickly wind stumbles over the side of the road and in a moment rushes along the gray streets, where the flashes of the day are mixed with the shades of night.
Nobody knows the fate of this man, even he sometimes thinks that he has completely forgotten about the past, burying his rags in the wastelands of the subconscious. However, he remembers a black gym bag in a deep hole containing a scattering of brown shards that resemble a human heart.
His name is Niko Bellic. In an attempt to find something long lost, he fled Eastern Europe, where he had to “do terrible things”. This search will lead him not through good deeds and heroic achievements, but through the awkward cycle of violence and colorless gangster life in a city that breathes darkness at night.
Liberty City is a gloomy jungle with hungry predators lurking in the shadows. Niko, like these predators, is concerned about surviving in an unfamiliar environment. He left his heart in a past life, so he is no longer touched by ash sunsets against the background of tall concrete boxes, torrential rains and sunrises full of scarlet cold.
The only dialect Niko speaks without emphasis is the language of violence. Despite his desire to end his criminal life, it is through violence that he communicates with local residents and integrates into Liberty City's well-functioning mechanism. In this concrete jungle, all shades of emotions and feelings are furiously smeared to death-blue and gray.
Although Niko's life is like a fast-paced gangster action movie, it's very different from movies. The violence parade turns out to be a monotonous and exhausting job that is often underpaid. In addition, employers see Niko as a soulless tool—he just has to complete tasks and not ask questions. And if they are unhappy, you can always get rid of it.
People who know Niko personally think that on rare good nights he dreams of hot beaches, long palm trees and golden sand. Perhaps he has a different name and enjoys life, because the path of a bandit has led him to prosperity, a beloved family and a glamorous life. Maybe he even managed to achieve his main goal — to find a lost heart, whose emptiness sometimes tingles.
Niko actually has a different dream. The horrors of war have overlapped with the new environment and people, and now the mind shows a shocking show with burning cars, passers-by staggering from injuries, downed helicopters and the breathless bodies of police officers. The violence that is imprinted on the back of the eyelids haunts even in dreams. But Niko is not afraid of blood; what scares him the most is the realization that he can kill on the scale of a natural disaster.
Sleep goes away and a new day begins, indistinguishable from the previous ones. Niko, like other members of criminal Liberty City, seems to be stuck in a dying world. He doesn't get better or worse, he doesn't learn from his mistakes, and he doesn't change in any way. Even the subconscious desire to regain feelings and breathe life back into yourself is gradually fading away.
But Niko doesn't despair. Like life itself, he likes to joke — cynically and angrily. Meetings with employers, friends, or corrupt police officers quickly become a collection of jokes. At times like these, Niko introduces himself as a guy who can say something frivolous to a serious face. Or he can pretend that what is happening is a surreal norm, with a city that has swallowed its own colors as the backdrop.
A shootout or a car theft can turn into a parody at any moment. All participants in this ballet are endowed with an awkward physicality that brings their plasticity closer to real people. They can stumble over construction debris, get hit by a car, get hurt by a ricochet, or fall off the roof during a chase. High chaos, viscous animations, and funny lines turn the darkness of Liberty City into caricatures of the Buster Keaton era.
An awkward virtual comedy allows Niko to repeatedly find the strength to move through everyday jelly and laugh at the tragedies of the past. The jungle is a place of soulful gospel music and invigorating jokes. Each new dawn is a reason to smile, even if it is discolored. Perhaps one day Niko will put the scattered shards together, or they will lose all significance, because the chilling loss may be replaced by something that fills days with meaning.
