Grand Theft Auto is a long-running video game franchise that started out in 1997 and, to this day, remains one of the most beloved series of all time. There are a lot of reasons the franchise remains beloved to this day, including the open-world gameplay and sheer chaos players can cause if necessary. Above all else, the best quality of each and every GTA game is their main characters, or at least that's the case with most GTA games.
If anything, certain GTA protagonists haven't stood the test of time, including Toni Cipriani from Liberty City Stories and Victor Vance from Vice City Stories. Grand Theft Auto III was first dropped in 2001 and quickly took the world by storm. The game marked a new era of open-world gameplay, with players being able to explore the three boroughs that comprise Liberty City, the GTA world's version of New York City.
Liberty City's streets are littered with all sorts of gangs and criminal organizations that make the game more dangerous to play. Combined with its then-contemporary setting, GTA 3 is home to all sorts of colorful characters, from paranoid mob boss Salvatore Leone to the reserved yet vicious Yakuza co-leader Asuka Kasen. To complement these characters, GTA 3 could've really gone for a protagonist that stays truly loyal to and deferential toward these criminal kingpins.
Unfortunately, instead of anyone interesting, the game's main protagonist had to be Claude. GTA 3 deliberately discloses little about Claude, other than him being the ex-boyfriend of the game's main antagonist. Unlike future GTA protagonists, Claude never says a word, which isn't a mark against him in itself.
However, it makes his actions in the game, including murdering close allies, more callous than the likes of Tommy Vercetti from Vice City. The worst part about it is that Claude is simply not that interesting as the main protagonist. Granted, he does serve as a surrogate for gamers, who prefer to simply get through the game's missions.
That being said, his presence in GTA 3 only makes the game feel more mean-spirited than it needs to be, not to mention more oppressive and cold compared to later GTA installments. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories successfully translated the 3D GTA formula onto the PSP, a handheld console. What this means is that the game plays almost perfectly like a 3D GTA game, such as Vice City or San Andreas, should.
Consequently, the novelty of playing a full-fledged GTA game on a handheld made it the best-selling game on the PSP, serving as a benchmark for how home console games are to be portrayed on a handheld. The game itself is set in Liberty City in 1998, which is three years before the events of GTA 3. Not only does this mean players are able to experience life in the NYC-inspired city before Claude's escapades, but it assists to elaborate on the characterization of the franchise's supporting characters, including Salvatore Leone, who is the game's non-playable deuteragonist.
In a better world, it would've been fun to play as Salvatore and see how he gets around as a mob boss. Instead, however, Liberty City Stories settles for Toni Cipriani — a supporting character from GTA 3 — as protagonist. At the very least, unlike Claude from GTA 3, Toni speaks and has an actual stake in the game's story, which sees him and Salvatore trying to maintain their crime family's position in Liberty City.
That being said, one cannot help but get the distinct impression that he might've been better off as a non-playable supporting character. The fact of the matter is that Toni, not unlike Vaan from Final Fantasy XII, largely sits on the sidelines as Liberty City Stories' plot unravels. During this period, non-playable characters like Donald Love and Joseph Daniel O'Toole are up to such antics as cannibalism and voyeurism.
Meanwhile, Toni merely takes and performs orders for whoever favors him at the moment. He's not nearly as callous as GTA 3's Claude, but he's even less interesting than that character. GTA Advance — officially released as just Grand Theft Auto — is the first handheld GTA game to not be a port of an existing installment, such as the Game Boy Color versions of the first two GTA games.
As with those earlier GTA games, GTA Advance is presented from a top-down perspective, meaning that, unlike the later Chinatown Wars with its isometric perspective, players aren't able to get a good view of Liberty City. Still, with it being a GTA game, it allows players to perform all sorts of chaos throughout Liberty City, as well as side-quests that make the game feel livelier. All the game really needed to make it feel alive is a protagonist that assists to articulate the game's compact and chaotic nature, perhaps an existing character like 8-Ball or Asuka Kasen, both of GTA 3 fame.
Sadly, the game is instead graced with Mike, who is somehow both gratingly boring and unnecessarily cruel at the same time. In the case of his cruelty, Mike isn't wholly unlike other GTA protagonists who perform morally dubious acts that they know have strong ramifications. Mike, however, is an absolute psychopath who is willing to do anything for kicks, including kidnapping school children and human trafficking.
Morally reprehensible as he is, Mike is also a dull protagonist. This is ironic, since—unlike GTA 3's Claude—he at least speaks. His only real motivation in GTA Advance is to avenge his friend Vinnie, but other than that, he doesn't have a lot more going on in his head.
He doesn't stop GTA Advance from being enjoyable, but he does lessen what impact that game has on the popular memory. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories is chronologically the earliest game in the modern 3D series, being set in 1984 in the titular Miami-inspired Vice City. This knowledge opens up a world of opportunities for players to interact with characters that, by this point, have been known for playing an overarching role in the entire franchise.
This especially includes Phil Cassidy, who was present in every early-3D-era GTA game apart from San Andreas. For that matter, it proves imperative that Vice City Stories has a protagonist that effectively works to start it all. A good candidate on this front is Lance Vance, a protagonist-come-antagonist of Vice City who, goofy and childish as he may be, is also charming and scheming.
However, Vice City Stories instead opts for Lance's older brother Vic, a former military trainee turned criminal kingpin. This is far from a bad thing in itself, considering Vic's limited screen time in Vice City warranted a more expansive characterization for him. The problem is that Vic is incredibly angsty, which could be justified by the many misfortunes he faces throughout the game.
What is not justifiable, however, is just how hypocritical he really is. Vic spends most of the game—especially the latter half—consumed by self-loathing about his turn to crime. However, come Vice City, Vic appears to lack any sentimentality or remorse for his actions, happily conducting a drug deal with main protagonist Tommy Vercetti before getting gunned down.
It makes his lamentations throughout Vice City Stories all the more laughable, and combined with the fact that players are able to make him mow down as many civilians as they so desire, it only serves to make him all the more hypocritical.