Later projects revealed that the protagonist had been remarkably lucky.
Rockstar veteran Dan Houser joined Lex Fridman’s podcast and spoke about his involvement in a number of the studio’s games.
It emerged that the life of Grand Theft Auto IV’s hero was truly at risk. Niko could have been killed, but fortune intervened — at the time the team had no clear way to allow players to continue exploring the open world and access remaining content if the main character were dead.
In the end they chose to keep Niko alive. Still, Rockstar didn’t abandon the idea of killing off a protagonist and ultimately took that leap in Red Dead Redemption with John Marston:
“…I wanted to kill Niko at the end of GTA IV, but that proved impossible. The game simply doesn’t work that way. It was one of those ideas we considered but didn’t pursue — then, while developing RDR1, we said to each other: ‘Let’s do it. Let’s take the risk and try.’ And it paid off.”
Source: iXBT.games