Five Ways to Play The Lost and Damned

Gus Mastrapa offers points of entry into Grand Theft Auto IV's new downloadable expansion.
2/24/2009 7:32 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Liberty City is a big place. And like most naked cities it has more than a couple stories to tell. The Lost and Damned lets fans of Grand Theft Auto IV revisit their old stomping grounds from the perspective of Johnny Klebitz, second-in-command of the motorcycle gang The Lost Brotherhood. But if you're only diving into this new content to tackle new missions, you may be missing the point. Rockstar games, especially the Grand Theft Auto series, live or die by details -- little moments that add up to something much bigger than the sum of their parts. After spending a week with The Lost and Damned I've isolated a handful of angles that will best help you find, savor, and digest these details. Try approaching the game from these directions.

As a disgruntled underling: Most all Grand Theft Auto protagonists share a mistrust of authority. In the case of Johnny Klebitz, he's forced to step down from a leadership position when Billy Grey, the president of the Lost Brotherhood, gets out of the pokey. Klebitz had held the fort by being sensible and shrewd, and keeping his head down. Grey comes out of the joint guns blazing, starting a war with a rival gang. Klebitz disapproves of this balls-out approach and spends much of his energy grumbling about Billy's thoughtless decisions. Being an underling sucks, especially when you know better than your boss. And who among us doesn't know better than our bosses? We all share Johnny's frustrations in our day-to-day lives. The great thing about The Lost and Damned is that it gives us a chance to chafe against leadership. During the first third of the game, players are forced to ride in formation behind Grey, the gang leader. Pull your hog ahead of him and he chews you out. But Klebitz is no bitch. On the way to one mission Klebitz finally gets sick of looking at Billy's tailpipe. "Let's drop the hammer!" he shouts. Now it's a race to the gang's destination. When Klebitz pulls past Grey, he shouts "get behind me!" It's a moment of anarchy and rebellion that taps into frustrations most everyone shares.

With an appreciation of the unreliable narrator: A common criticism levied at Grand Theft Auto IV was that Nico Bellic said one thing and did another. He complained that war was terrible, but he used violence and brutality to solve his problems. Johnny Klebitz shares the same character flaw. He's ticked at Billy Grey for starting a gang war, but when it comes time to do missions he kills cops and clips innocent pedestrians. Some say this is an inconsistency in the Grand Theft Auto IV game world. I call it an approach to storytelling as old as time. Johnny Klebitz, like Holden Caulfield and Tony Soprano before him, is an unreliable narrator. We can't entirely trust what he says. He is, after all, a murderous psychopath. Half the fun of playing with a protagonist like Klebitz is to try plumbing his emotional depths -- to push aside the monstrous elements and find the few remaining bits of humanity.