Grand Theft Auto: Loose ends

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A look back at the unfinished stories the juggernaut series left in its wake

With Grand Theft Auto IV taking a new, more realistic direction in a radically different vision of Liberty City, it seems more and more as though the series - like its new protagonist, Niko Bellic - is angling for a fresh start. The cartoonish mayhem of previous GTAs seems out of place in this bleak new vision of Liberty, and according to ourUK counterparts, virtually no familiar faces will appear in GTA IV. But that doesn't necessarily mean we've seen the last of them. Rockstar's left a lot of plot threads dangling, and whether it's in a shiny new sequel, a downloadable episode or another PSP game, it'd be all too easy for the series to go back and mine its past for new stories.

To find out where the series might be going, then, let's take a look at where it's been:

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
2006 | PSP, PS2

The last Grand Theft Auto game is also the first chronologically; Vice City Stories tells the tale of 28-year old ex-soldier Vic Vance, brother of Vice City antagonist Lance Vance. We enter the Vance residence just as it reaches its lowest ebb; Vic has received a dishonorable discharge for prostitute-related buffoonery and Lance is trying to kick a cocaine habit. The brothers dig themselves out of this hole the only way they know how: by climbing the ranks of Vice City’s crime syndicates and engaging in a number of third-person adventures for assorted criminal overlords.