Sitting behind the wheel for the first time felt like a blow to the psyche, cracking the world open into an impossibly large scale. I suddenly realized there was nothing stopping me from driving to California (for example) but a few stretches of highway and a whole lot of time. When you're 16, 18, 20 ... time is nothing. All it takes to get from A to B is the application of a little gas. Apply more and you get there faster. How fast? Well, what have you got under the hood?
One of my first cars was a little Honda Civic that had been carefully modified by a previous owner to disregard posted traffic regulations. It wasn't even technically street legal, but damn, was that mother fast. One night in San Antonio, bored perhaps, but most likely annoyed at some girl, I decided to see what she had. It was well after midnight, traffic on the 410 was light and I had nothing better to do. So I sidled into the middle lane and opened her up. Ten white knuckle minutes later, I still had no idea how fast the car could go. I lost my nerve at 115, but the car, she was still ready to go.
A year or so later, peeling asphalt on the long, flat highway between Fort Worth and Canada, I got my first taste of how hard life can lean on the rule breakers. This would not be the last time I'd meet a man wearing a cowboy hat and a gun, but it would be the most expensive: a $300 ticket on the spot (pre-2000 dollars, mind you), and he should have taken my license. I wouldn't blame him, now, if he had. That same year, having missed a turn during a late night party hopping spree, I swung wide on a two-lane, gravel road, felt my tires bite deep into the soft shoulder, shifted down, pulled the hand brake and gunned it, spinning the little four-banger in a tight circle, trying to head back in the other direction without losing too much momentum. I felt like a god, the car, my sun chariot. That feeling lasted about two seconds, until the Oldsmobile station wagon I hadn't seen in the opposite lane clipped my back bumper, sending my car into a spin and hurtling into a ditch. No one was hurt, miraculously, but the Civic was done for, and my days as a lawbreaking road warrior were drawing to a close.
As I learned to drive (mostly through trial and error) like a civilized human being, I was also getting to know the Texas legal system quite well. It works like this: break a law, you get boned. The end. I understand several other states operate in a similar manner. They have to make up for the lack of an income tax somehow. After that first extravagant speeding ticket, successive offenses piled up until I decided enough was enough; if I was ever going to have a future as a debt-free human being, I had to tame the tiger in my tank. The result: adulthood, and driving safely under the speed limit, which, I can assure you is exactly as much fun as it sounds.
In an open-world game like GTA, however, there are no penalties for breaking the law. None that matter anyway. In fact, breaking as many laws as possible simultaneously is encouraged and rewarded. It is, after the beat down of becoming a responsible adult, like a tonic to the soul. In the game, the girls, once again, all have private parts and the speedometer goes to 120 for a reason. Granted, they still haven't figured out how to make all the little nuances of living a lawless life come alive, but they're working on it.
The advancements in virtual world games in the past few years alone have been jaw-dropping, and all point toward the ultimate, eventual goal of creating a game where what you can reasonably accomplish in real life is faithfully represented in digital form. All of life's possibilities uncapped by technological; the limitations of reality rendered inconsequential. Traffic got you down? Screw the other guys; they're just artificial intelligence anyway. Blast that fuel truck and the rest go down like dominoes.
Granted, there are good sides to living a life of quiet obedience. The beating a body takes from a crash can't be overstated. You may walk away, but you won't walk without a limp. Add in a little bit of good-natured gunplay and the distance between the fantasy and the real begins to make a lot more sense. And yet, as hard as I try to get out, GTA keeps pulling me back in. I'm looking forward to GTA IV in a way I didn't expect when it was announced. This may have a little to do with the fact that there just aren't any other exciting games out right now, but it has a lot to do with wanting to be young again - and free.
Russ Pitts is wondering how much sick time he has. His blog can be found at www.falsegravity.com.
