Niko Bellic (GTA IV) Joins the Chengguan
CLARIFICATION: TIME’s China blog story sort of implies that this is an official release, or somehow actually part of the game. It is not. As far as anyone can tell, this is just a hack/mod/re-skin created by a fan or fans in China for the purpose of making a joke. It isn’t something you could ever see by playing GTA IV. (As a sidenote, “ultraviolent” TIME? Really? Someone needs to watch A Clockwork Orange again).
NOTE: We seem to be experiencing some technological weirdness at the moment. If some or all of the pictures below don’t load, try reloading. If that doesn’t work, you should still be able to read the captions, the pictures are the exact same (and in the same order) as those posted in the original article on ESWN as linked below.
Recently, ESWN posted a sina.com thread about a humorous GTA IV re-skin that puts the violent game’s protagonist in the uniform of a chengguan, China’s notoriously violent city administrators. Chengguan are almost universally reviled for their corrupt and often violent methods. Usually, they’re booting vendors off of the streets of Chinese cities, but now apparently they can terrorize the virtual denizens of Liberty City, too.
ESWN didn’t translate the subtitles in the pictures, which are actually pretty funny, so we’ll repost them below with the subtitles (loosely) translated as captions. Enjoy.
"I am a Liberty City City Administrator, I just finished my training in China and today is my first day of work."
"With great power comes great responsibility; I know this thoroughly: this city needs me!"
"In a city as dangerous as this, driving a normal car would be unsafe. This has 3cm thick iron plating, bulletproof glass, explosion-proof wheels...these are the most fundamental elements of a safe car, and also, this car is from China..."
"Heading out! Today's mission is to clean up the small stalls selling things around Central Park."
"There's someone selling hot dogs. Perfect, I'm hungry!"
"I've experienced this in training before, I'm an expert!"
"We didn't get along well, let's go!"
"You want to run? You underestimate my abilities! Shit!"
"The wings of a white crane?"
"Check out my cold stare."
Fuck! Your daddy (i.e. me) doesn't ever pay at restaurants in China, I eat your hot dog and you dare whisper? Do you have a permit for being so ballsy?
。。。
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[...] According to a thread on the Chinese web portal sina.com (translated here by Roland Soong, with details added at ChinaGeeks), a chengguan officer has been added to the ultraviolent game “Grand Theft Auto IV.” [...]
I think that the Time China blog got it wrong because Roland Soong on ESWN, the original source of the story in English here http://www.zonaeuropa.com/200906a.brief.htm#013 , implied that this was an official release (maybe too literally translating the Chinese version from sina) . btw, ESWN has now added translations to the subtitles too
@ seesi, I spoke with Roland Song about it and he knows it’s not official, so it’s definitely TIME’s screw-up. Also, ESWN doesn’t appear to have subtitle translations, but if they do, that’s fine. We totally stole their post anyway, plus, it’s the internet!
I should add that were Roland to translate the subtitles, his translation would inevitably be better than mine anyway.
[...] young girls are being raped, and whatever’s left gets “Public Safetyed”, “chengguaned”, “Joint Defensed”, “Public Securityed”, “stabilized”, [...]