The Getaway

A series of London set Wide Open Sandbox crime games with two entries to date

The first (The Getaway (2002) follows former Soho gangster Mark Hammond as he is blackmailed back into the life by a ruthless crime boss who has kidnapped his son. Parallel to this the game follows Frank Carter and his vendetta against the underworld.

The sequel Getaway: Black Monday was released in 2004 and follows the parallel stories of Organised Crime Squad officer Ben Mitchell and underworld connected amateur boxer Eddie O'Connor as a new underworld war breaks out.

A third game was intended but is currently in Development Hell.

Additionally the PSP game Gangs of London may qualify as a spinoff, having been made by the same team and also set in the London underworld.

Not to be confused with the Sam Peckinpah film The Getaway or its 1993 remake.

Tropes used in The Getaway include:

• Anti-Hero: Mark Hammond and Eddie O'Connor.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Ben Mitchell and Eddie O'Connor team up to take down Viktor Skobel in two of the endings to Black Monday.
• Big Bad: Charlie Jolson in the first game. Viktor Skobel in the sequel.
• Bittersweet Ending/No Ending: The Getaway: Mark is alive, but his wife is dead, and he can never return to London. Yasmine and Alex also get off the boat just moments before it blows, but we don't know if they managed to get out of London before the cops or other gangs found and killed Mark and Yasmine. Frank Carter also escapes by diving into the harbor, but we don't know if he survived the fall.
  • The Getaway: Black Monday: Eddie avenges the murder of Danny, but most of his friends are dead, and he'll most likely have to leave London forever for killing dozens and dozens of people, some of whom were cops.Depending on which path you chose will determine whether or not the ending's bittersweet or downright depressing.
• Cowboy Cop: Frank Carter in the first game. Ben Mitchell in the second.
• Dark Action Girl: Yasmin in the first game, a former prostitute turned hitwoman. Nadya in the second game.
• Decoy Protagonist: Arguably Ben Mitchell. Unlike Carter, who has the same amount of screen time as Hammond, Mitchell is only playable for eight missions in Black Monday, and then the rest of the story focuses on Eddie while Mitchell is cast aside until the climax. He even gets killed by Eddie in two of the Multiple Endings.
• Downer Beginning: The first game starts with Hammond's son getting kidnapped and his wife being shot and killed.
• Downer Ending: In the worst ending in Black Monday, Eddie is forced to shoot and kill Mitchell, Viktor kills Sam, and Eddie flees the scene shortly after killing Viktor and looking down at Sam's body with grief.
• The Dragon: Jake Jolson in the first game. Alexei in the second.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Averted. The cars don't even explode when they take too much damage; they just burn to a crisp.
• Guns Akimbo: Mark Hammond, Eddie O'Connor and Frank Carter can do this with handguns and submachine guns. Some enemies and bosses do too.
• Infant Immortality: Played straight in the first game, but averted in the sequel.
• London Gangster: Technically most of the cast, but the Bethnal Green Mob (led by the bald, cigar chomping Charlie Jolson) and the Soho based Collins Crew fit the archetype. Averted in that a multiratial London underworld is portrayed with Triads, Yardies and Russian Mafiya taking major roles.
• The Mafiya: The primary villains in the second game are the Skobel Group, a Russian Mafiya syndicate disguised as a bank and running prostitution and arms trafficking. Interestingly the game points out that the group has members from all over Eastern Europe including Latvians and Estonians.
• Mauve Shirt: Liam Spencer.
• Multiple Endings: Black Monday has four endings. Two center around driving Sam to the Skobel building, and another two center around saving Jackie Philips. If you decide to drive Sam and save Jackie, you get the "good" ending. If you don't, you get the Downer Ending. Not doing one, but doing the other earns an ending that's a cross between the two.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In two of the endings to Black Monday, Eddie is forced to shoot and kill Ben Mitchell. After he dies, Eddie briefly looks at his body with remorse.
• Non-Action Guy: Sam, who has no combat abilities whatsoever and is entirely dependant on stealth.
• Regenerating Health: You can recover lost health by leaning against a wall and resting.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Eddie stops at nothing to find and kill the man who murdered his coach.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Liam Spencer is unceremoniously shot to death off-screen in Black Monday.
• Taking You with Me: Knowing he'll die anyway, Charlie activates the Time Bomb on the Sol Vita in a desperate attempt to take out all the gangs. Had Jamahl not escaped, his plan would've succeeded entirely.
• Too Dumb to Live: In the last level of the first game, most of the Mooks seems to ignore that there's a Time Bomb on the ship and decide to kill each other instead of running for safety.

Frank Carter: "Half the waterfront's about to go up and you're STILL arguing!"

• The Triads and the Tongs: In the first game the London wing of the real life 14K Triad controls the city's heroin trade. Their standing by the time of the second game is left ambigious.
• Villainous Breakdown: While onboard the Sol Vita, Charlie Jolson snaps and decides to not only kill himself with the bomb, but all the other rival gangs.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Subverted. It seems the creators of the series knew players would be asking what happened to the minor characters, but instead of giving a straight answer, they just dropped bridges on them.
  • Except for Grievous and Mr. Lee, who fates were never revealed. Although The Other Wiki claims that they died on board the Sol Vita.
• The Yardies: The Yardie crew run by Jamahl are an important faction in both games, controlling London's crack trade in the first and moving into arms trafficking with the Skobel Group in the second.