Liberty City

Liberty City is a fictional city, based on New York City, used as the setting in several Grand Theft Auto games, most notable Grand Theft Auto III. Liberty City is the most frequently featured fictional setting in the GTA series, having appeared six times out of the eleven games:


 * As a level in the original Grand Theft Auto 1 (1997/1998).
 * The Grand Theft Auto III rendition, featured as the setting of Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Grand Theft Auto Advance (GBA, 2004), Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP, 2005), and featured briefly for a single mission in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) and also in The Introduction - a machinima based on the game.
 * As seen in the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV as being much more closely modelled after New York City, with such recognizable landmarks as the Statue of Liberty, Chrysler Building, and the Empire State Building.

In all renditions, Liberty City is primarily depicted as a large city with a sizeable population (4 million in the Grand Theft Auto III rendition), featuring a complete transportation infrastructure of roads and railways, and is located on a geographical configuration of shorelines and islands, similar to that of New York City. The city has been described as one suffering from crime and corruption, with the presence of organized crime, feuding street gangs, petty criminals, and rampant misconduct among city officials and law enforcement. Parts of Liberty City have also suffered major damage and loss from bombings, which are depicted as being orchestrated by local criminals. Some of these damages, however, have been repaired or resulted in complete redevelopment of an entire area.

Grand Theft Auto 1 rendition
The map of Liberty City, as depicted in Grand Theft Auto.Liberty City was first featured in the original Grand Theft Auto. The city's geography and alignment of districts was more true to that of New York City, featuring two major mainlands with a Manhattan-like central island (which contains a large park at the center, a reference to Central Park), and several smaller islands along a river of the city, with the mainlands and islands connected primarily by road bridges. Train services with lines running in the city were also present.

Different neighborhoods of New York City and New Jersey were also spoofed, with naming similar to their real-life counterparts. The list of Liberty City's neighborhoods is as followed (north to south), with the name of the real area is is based on in brackets:


 * East shore; Eaglewood; Hackenslash; Fort Law; Schlechberg; Guernsey City (Jersey City); New Guernsey (New Jersey); Central island; Nolaw; Island Height; Park; Island City (Lower Manhattan or Midtown Manhattan). Minor islands: Law Island (Ward's Island and Randall's Island); Nixon Island; West shore; Estoria; Kings; Ardler; Brocklyn (Brooklyn); Tellberg; Brocklyn Docks; Northwest shore; Brix (Bronx); Island View.

Grand Theft Auto III rendition

 * See main article: Liberty City in GTA III

The second and most well-known appearance of Liberty City is as the sole location of Grand Theft Auto III, assuming a significantly different design from its original version. The location, circa late-autumn 2001, is often referred to as "the worst place in America" by in-game literature for its rampant crime and corruption. Gang wars, theft, and murder are endemic to everyday life to the point where police intervention has become nearly negligible. In addition to its appearance alongside Vice City and the state of San Andreas, the city is also located nearby Carcer City, which was featured in Manhunt, another video game developed by Rockstar Games. Little is known about Liberty City's early history, although dialog exists in GTA III claiming that the city was "a church, a cow pasture and three houses when the telephone was invented", and a map of the city provided in the packaging of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories claims that the city was celebrating its 200th anniversary in 1998, suggesting that the city was founded in 1798. The population of the city is given at 4 million, as stated in the game's manual, In addition, the city's media companies and properties are purchased by Love Media, a media conglomerate owned by Donald Love, after Love arrived to the city in 2001 (Liberty City Stories suggests that the companies are independent prior).

The city is broken up into three main boroughs:
 * Portland Island - The harbour and industrial area with the Red Light District and Chinatown
 * Staunton Island - The central business district with commercial and residential skyscrapers
 * Shoreside Vale - The hilly, rural suburban residential district with the Cochrane Dam and Francis International Airport

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories rendition

 * See main article: Liberty City in GTA LCS

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories takes places in the same Liberty City as in Grand Theft Auto III, but is set in 1998, three years before the events in GTA III. As such, the Liberty City Stories rendition of the city explains some of the city's characteristics in GTA III. At the time of Liberty City Stories, the city is officially declared "The least likely place to succeed in America" by an October 30, 1998 issue of the Liberty Tree.

In 1998, the city is depicted undergoing major changes in inter-borough road links. Callahan Bridge, which is expected to connect Staunton Island and Portland Island, is under construction, and is due to be completed in May 1998. The Porter Tunnel is also seen as mostly under construction, but is revealed to have completed segments linking the Shoreside Vale exits. The segment linking Staunton is unfinished but still accessible, as shown when Toni Cipriani is seen driving a van through the area to reach Fort Staunton in Staunton. Construction of the Portland segment, however, had yet to begin, as the area is still in the process of excavating a tunnel.

While no road links exist between Portland and the rest of Liberty City, the inter-borough subway system remains connected to all three boroughs, allowing pedestrians to travel between the areas with fewer restrictions. The island is initially accessible by car in ferries between Harwood, on the northwest end of Portland, and Rockford, on the northern end of Staunton Island. Nevertheless, ferry services cease to exist by late-2001. While the Porter Tunnel is still unfinished at the time of GTA III, the completion of the Callahan Bridge suggestively put an end to ferries in the city.

In Liberty City Stories, the city is in the process of constructing several buildings, including some of Liberty City's tallest. For example, the Jefferson St Credit Union office building, which is the largest and tallest building in Liberty City in GTA III, is under construction in 1998.

1998 Liberty City contains a different distribution of gang activity, particularly with three Mafia families: The Leones, the Forellis and the Sindaccos, all of which assume a larger control on districts in Portland and Staunton than in GTA III. At the time, the three families are at war with each other.

Motorcycles are initially permitted in Liberty City. By GTA III, a citywide ban on the vehicle is imposed, explaining the absence of motorcycles in GTA III. Police cars in Liberty City Stories are depicted assuming a marking and paint scheme that resembles those of the NYPD during the 1990s, although the game's version used a black-and-white color scheme, instead of blue and white.

Grand Theft Auto Advance rendition
Liberty City was also featured as the setting of Grand Theft Auto Advance, which was set roughly one year before the events in GTA III. In Advance, all three islands are featured, and the Callahan Bridge has been completed, but ferry services are absent. In Portland, an unusually long overpass exists spanning between one end of the Callahan Bridge to the blocked passage of the Porter Tunnel. At one point of the game, Liberty City is said to be affected by Bubonic plague.

Because of the hardware limitation of the Game Boy Advance, the city assumed a classical top-down perspective, with roads running only horizontally and vertically, while the overall design and identity of the city remains similar to other GTA III-era renditions. Top-down gameplay meant that height-dependent or underground elements such as subway trains and tunnels (including the Porter Tunnel) could not be implemented into Advance. Slopes are also absent in the Advance rendition.

Minor role in other Grand Theft Auto-related games
Remaining Grand Theft Auto games set in Grand Theft Auto III-canon, while set in completely difference locales, still mention Liberty City in dialog or feature a part of the city for a short period of time. Also, protagonists featured in these games have prominent experiences with the city for a period of time.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Tommy Vercetti, having just been released from prison, was dispatched to Vice City in 1986 by Sonny Forelli, who was shown inside the Forelli-run Marco's Bistro at Saint Mark's, Portland, Liberty City. Tommy had also earned the nickname the "Harwood Butcher", suggesting that he had murdered several people in the Harwood district of Portland, resulting in his 15-year jail sentence.

The Saint Mark's district of Portland, Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, as Carl "CJ" Johnson rides a taxicab (lower left) to Marco's Bistro (upper right), during a cutscene of the Saint Mark's Bistro mission. Note also the presence of fallen snow.In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Carl "CJ" Johnson returns to his childhood home in Los Santos, San Andreas after having spent five years in Liberty City, where he commits petty crime and worked for Don Salvatore Leone's son, Joey Leone. During the events of the game, Carl briefly returns to Liberty City to assassinate a high ranking Forelli Mafia member at Marco's Bistro, under orders from Salvatore Leone. The mission takes place in a section of southeast Saint Mark's, wherein Carl must fight through attacking Mafia members in Marco's Bistro and kill his target in the back lot of the restaurant.

Liberty City is also featured in The Introduction, a machinima prequel of San Andreas. Set immediately before the events of the game, The Introduction shows both Carl Johnson stealing cars and mugging people in Liberty City and Salvatore Leone making arragements for his participation in a casino venture in Las Venturas.

Grand Theft Auto IV rendition
Unreleased Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV, as seen in the first trailer and the GameInformer magazine preview, has been remodeled to look much more like New York City compared to its Grand Theft Auto III renditions. Landmarks such as the Statue of Happiness (Statue of Liberty), Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Flatiron Building, and the Getalife (Metlife) Building are present, as well as a Times Square lookalike that features advertisements for the Liberty Tree. A rollercoaster called the "Screamer" appears to be based off the The Cyclone of Coney Island.

This rendition of Liberty City has versions of four of the five boroughs of New York City, plus New Jersey. Brooklyn has become Broker, Manhattan is Algonquin, Queens is Dukes, Bronx is Bohan and New Jersey is Alderney. The area of the city is compressed in size (as seen with the Empire State Building's proximity to the Broker Bridge in the final shot), and the various landmarks are placed much closer to each other than in real life. The entire map is smaller than that of San Andreas, but is immensely more detailed and has no "wasted" open space such as countryside or desert.

''It's a smaller geographical mass than San Andreas, but not an inch of this world is wasted or dedicated to vast stretches of country or desert. It's a tightly packed metropolis that captures the eye with its decades of world-class architecture, sun-blocking towers, and extraordinary walks of life.''

When asked why Rockstar Games decided to use Liberty City, Dan Houser, Vice President of the company said: "[New York City] is an environment we felt had never been done to the level we were envisioning it in a video game. From looking at all of the locations, this was the one that really stood out to us, and really had that impact. It has all of these iconic things that you couldn't put into a game before."

"The texturing of the Algonquin streets, which are filled with crater-like potholes and occasional glimpses of the brick used in a world gone by, are greatly varied in design and something you can't tear your eye from. The visual makeup of the city was something we could capture real well and really understand the minute aspects of its personality. Trying to put that into a videogame is something that we think is unique to the video game medium. It was a way that we could capture some aspects of the experience of living there that you couldn't put into a film, you couldn't put into a TV show, and you couldn't put into a book."

"A big part of New York life is walking around the streets and meeting lunatics. That's something that we definitely tried to put into the game. We are trying to give it that life and difference between the neighbourhoods and the difference between the kinds of people. We are tying to capture that Capital of the World aspect of New York."

"It's not the full city, it's an approximation thereof. We make a city that feels like the real thing, but is perfectly tuned for gameplay in the broadest sense. The world is not designed to be a video game. We are trying to make a video game that feels like the world, but still plays like a video game. The design of the city and the missions that unfold within it are designed hand-in-hand and complement each other perfectly. Everything in this world is here for a reason, where it is directly tied to gameplay or simply there to create atmosphere."