Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
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| Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | |
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 Grand Theft Auto: Vice City cover |
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| Developer(s) | Rockstar North |
| Publisher(s) | Rockstar Games Capcom (Japan) |
| Distributor(s) | Take-Two Interactive |
| Writer(s) | Dan Houser James Worrall |
| Series | Grand Theft Auto |
| Engine | RenderWare |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation 2, Windows, Xbox, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, PlayStation 3 (PSN) |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Distribution | CD, DVD, download |
Vice City draws much of its inspiration from 1980s American culture. Set in 1986 in Vice City, a fictional city modeled after Miami, the story revolves around Mafia hitman Tommy Vercetti, who was recently released from prison. After being involved in a drug deal gone wrong, Tommy seeks out those responsible while building a criminal empire and seizing power from other criminal organizations in the city. The game uses a tweaked version of the game engine used in Grand Theft Auto III and similarly presents a huge cityscape, fully populated with buildings, vehicles, and people. Like other games in the series, Vice City has elements from driving games and third-person shooters, and features an open world gameplay that gives players more control over their playing experience.
Upon its release, Vice City became the best-selling video game of 2002. Until July 2006, Vice City was the best-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time. Vice City also appeared on Japanese magazine Famitsu's readers' list of the favorite 100 videogames of 2006, the only fully Western title on the list.[4] Following this success, Vice City saw releases in Europe, Australia and Japan, as well as a release for the PC. The game was later bundled with its predecessor in the Xbox compilation Grand Theft Auto: Double Pack; both games were later bundled with GTA: San Andreas in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy. Vice City's setting is also revisited in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, which serves as a prequel to events in Vice City. In December 2012, Rockstar released Vice City for iOS and Android platforms as celebration for the game's 10th anniversary.
Contents
Plot
Tommy Vercetti, a loyal former member of the Forelli Family, has just been released in 1986, serving 15 years for killing 11 men in the Harwood District of Liberty City in early 1971.[5] Tommy's old boss, Sonny Forelli, fears that Tommy's presence in Liberty City will heighten tensions between the other Liberty City families and bring unwanted attention to his organization's criminal activities.[6]To prevent this from happening, Sonny ostensibly promotes Tommy to a Capo and sends him to Vice City under the guardianship of Mafia lawyer Ken Rosenberg to act as their buyer for a series of cocaine deals for Sonny, whose interest is to expand his family activities down the South and to overrun the Liberty drug market with the high-end cocaine from Vice City, hoping to create a monopoly on the Liberty City drug ring.[7]
Soon, Tommy and his bodyguards are awaited at the Escobar International Airport by Ken, who gives them an info about the deal and takes them to the docks, where they are awaited by the Vance Crime Family, and their leader, Victor Vance (the main character of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories). As they settle the deal, they are ambushed by several armed and masked men, who kill Victor and Tommy's bodyguards. Tommy narrowly escapes with Ken from the docks, and as a result, he ultimately loses both Forelli's money and the cocaine in the process. Ken drives to his office, while Tommy returns back to his hotel.[8]
When Tommy informs Sonny of the ambush, Sonny loses his temper and threatens Tommy with the consequences of attempting to cheat the Mafia. Tommy promises to retrieve the money and the cocaine and kill whoever was responsible for the ambush.[9] Towards this end, Tommy meets up again with Ken at his office, who leads Tommy to retired colonel and mid-level drug dealer named Juan Garcia Cortez, who was Victor Vance's contact and who organized the deal between Vance's and the Forelli's. Cortez expresses regret about Tommy's bad deal and promises that his own lines of inquiry are being made to find out who masterminded the ambush plot. Tommy also meets Cortez's daughter Mercedes, who becomes Tommy's confidante shortly thereafter.
While Tommy waits for the outcome of Cortez's investigation he meets cocky 21-year old British record producer Kent Paul, real estate mogul Avery Carrington, and he also meets a mysterious man, who introduces himself as Lance Vance, younger brother of Victor, and the Underboss of the now-defunct Vance Crime Family, who wants revenge for the death of his brother, and also wants the drugs back.[10]
As time passes, Tommy befriends Cortez and begins to do regular work for him as an errand boy and hitman. On one such job, Tommy is called in with Lance to protect the deal of a drug baron named Ricardo Diaz during a deal with the Cubans, looking to buy some high-end cocaine. During the deal, it is ambushed by a gang of Haitians, but Tommy kills them and saves the deal, as well as Diaz's life. Consequently, Diaz begins hiring Tommy for his own agenda. Tommy takes this work because it pays well, in spite of his distaste for Diaz's character. On another errand for Cortez, he plans to meet a French courier in order to retrieve missile chips stolen from the French government. The deal is ambushed by several French agents and Tommy later kills the courier, who fled the ambush with the chips, retrieving the items.
Tommy learns from Cortez that Cortez's own lieutenant, Gonzalez, was partially responsible for the ambush on Tommy's cocaine deal since he is the only person besides Cortez to know about the deal, and Cortez asks Tommy to kill Gonzalez as a favor. Afterwards Cortez lays suspicion for the ambush on Diaz. Tommy initially continues the status quo to prepare for his attack, but his hand is forced when Lance attempts to take revenge by himself and fails, forcing Tommy to rush across the city and rescue him. With the die cast, the two move quickly to raid Diaz's mansion and execute Diaz. With Diaz dead, and Colonel Cortez fleeing the country to escape the French, the established drug empires in Vice City quickly crumble and Tommy and Lance personally take over, becoming Vice City's cocaine kingpins.
Tommy becomes the head of his own organization, the Vercetti Crime Family, and the more powerful and rich Tommy becomes, the more Lance begins to exhibit paranoia and sociopathic behaviors, to the point that he begins to abuse his own bodyguards and constantly calls Tommy in states of hysteria, losing his mind over being just a second-in-command as he was under his brother for the last years. Tommy begins to suspect that Lance is up to something.
Tommy makes alliance with Umberto Robina's Cubans against Auntie Poulet's Haitians, even though he is at the same time hypnotized by Poulet's voodoo into helping the Haitians as well. However after Tommy and Poulet part ways Tommy and the Cubans sneak explosives into the Haitian drug factory disguised in Haitian gang cars and blow it up, effectively ending the conflict and putting the Hatitians out of business, enabling the Cubans to take over Little Havana.
As his drug business expands, Tommy buys assets in nearly bankrupt companies such as a car lot named Sunshine Autos, a cab depot Kaufmann Cabs, a popular night club called The Malibu, a local boathouse, a print shop, Print Works, for counterfeit money, an ice-cream company, and an adult film company, all of which he turns back into competitive businesses. He also becomes a personal bodyguard to a rock band, an honorary member of a biker gang, and pulls off a major bank heist.
Eventually, the Forelli family discovers that Tommy has taken over much of the action in Vice City without sending the debt money to Sonny as required. Sonny is enraged and he feels betrayed by Tommy, and sends collectors consisting of high-ranking Forelli members to force money out of Tommy's assets. Tommy disposes of them, but after they injure the eldery operator of his print shop of counterfeit money, now fully intent to cut Sonny out of his business and not letting Forelli family interferre with his own.
An angered Sonny arrives in Vice City with a small army of mafiosi, intent on taking their tribute by force. When Sonny and his henchmen arrive at the Vercetti Estate, Tommy attempts to give them their tribute in counterfeit money. However, Lance exposes himself as a traitor, telling that the real money is inside Tommy's safe; Lance has contacted Sonny and informed him of his activities, from which Sonny find out about Tommy's fortune, and gave information about the business for Sonny to attack, and explains that he did it because Tommy started to disown him and didn't treated him equally, and wanted him dead so he could rebuild the Vance Crime Family and the fortune he had with his brother. Tommy enrages, and starts a gunfight.
In the ensuring gunfight, Tommy first chases, ridicules, and finally kills Lance, then storms downstairs, where he faces off with Sonny. During the gunfight, Sonny admits he is the one who set Tommy up fifteen years before, sending him to kill the eleven men who were expecting him. Tommy eventually kills Sonny in the main hall of his estate. With his enemies vanquished, Tommy establishes himself as the undisputed crime kingpin of Vice City.
Setting
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Grand Theft Auto series fictional chronology |
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1969 – London, 1969 1997 – Grand Theft Auto 1999 – Grand Theft Auto 2 1986 – Vice City 1992 – San Andreas 1998 – Liberty City Stories 2000 – Advance 2001 – Grand Theft Auto III – The Lost and Damned – The Ballad of Gay Tony 2009 – Chinatown Wars 2013 – Grand Theft Auto V |
Ricardo Diaz's opulent mansion and the climactic battle which takes place in it are very similar to their counterparts in Scarface.[11] Another reference is the game's overall storyline, as it is highly similar to the film, as is the design of the final mission. There are also more subtle references, such as an apartment hidden within the game with blood on the bathroom walls and a chainsaw (in a nod to the film's "chainsaw torture" scene),[11] or the pair of detectives who come chasing Tommy in a car resembling the Ferrari Testarossa after a three-star wanted level is attained, who look like characters portrayed by Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas in Miami Vice.
