Grand Theft Auto 5 Made Me Sad.

Greg Tito

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Sep 29, 2005
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Grand Theft Auto 5 Made Me Sad.

Playing as these horrible people needs stronger writing to back it up.

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WWmelb

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Great article. I got the sense of this article from the review and glad to see it fully fleshed out.

Morally reprehensible characters are fine if they are well written and engaging characters. Tommy V and CJ for instance in the GTA series.

Great read Greg and cheers.
 

Numb1lp

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Jan 21, 2009
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It sounds to me like your problem is with the fact that the characters aren't perfect. That isn't to say that they aren't good, which as you pointed out, no GTA character ever is. It's to say that they don't behave in a manner we would like them to. When you mentioned that "he uniformly treats everyone in his life badly, even his friends and mentors," it sounds like you don't approve of his possibly narcissistic behavior. Sorry to break it to you, but human beings are flawed. And that should be reflected in the art they make.

And the point about the terrorist act? http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/postm-body.html

I did appreciate the review, however.
 

XMark

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Jan 25, 2010
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This is making me think back to when I first played through Kane and Lynch 2. About two thirds of the way through the game, I came to the sudden realization that the only goal in the game was for the two protagonists to get out of Shanghai. Literally the only thing at stake in the narrative was the lives of two completely reprehensible characters with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And I just didn't care whether they lived or died because of it.
 

Seydaman

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I feel like that is the whole point of GTA V.

That an evil person isn't humorous or enjoyable.

It's just depressing.
 

Blood Brain Barrier

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It sounds perfectly true to the heritage of GTA, Greg. My memories of playing the first GTA at the age of 12 include getting missions over the phone to run over 20 pedestrians in under a minute, for absolutely no reason at all than getting paid for it.
 

Doopliss64

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I love articles like this, even if I end up disagreeing them. Just people discussing video games as art with actual emotional consequences, and not just some sort of high-tech toy. As opposed to the statements of a certain gorilla-avatared individual, which just make me die a little inside.
 

Goliath100

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Won't be a GTA game without being flawed in a big way, wouldn't it? Personally I wish Rockstar had gone all the way with the Stock market concept.
 

Abomination

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Man this game sounds awesome. I can't wait to finally be able to play a true villain.

Popping GTA's version of Steve Job's head doesn't sound like an evil act either, because as mentioned, the player or the character had no idea what they were doing at the time. It's possible to be a cause but not be responsible for an action.
 

Ace Morologist

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Numb1lp said:
It sounds to me like your problem is with the fact that the characters aren't perfect.
I'll field this one.

No. What he said was that the characters were reprehensible and (on top of that) unrelatable. You are grossly oversimplifying three pages of critique.

For my part, I have to agree up to a point. I've seen exactly one let's play episode of GTA 5, and I already hate all three main protagonists and all the supporting characters I've seen thus far. It doesn't look like fun, it looks like a slog going through that story. Everything about the game that doesn't have to do with the story (i.e., just fooling around with the gun and vehicle physics) looks like a blast, though.

--Morology!
 

thenightgaunt

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I suppose the point could be seeing how the negative qualities of a character are eventually responsible for his/her downfall. But that requires either telling the audience upfront that it's the whole point of the story or it requires masterful writing.
In general though most game developers utterly fail to succeed at this kind of storytelling. Kane and Lynch as a previous poster mentioned.

Now violence is not uncommon in games but I have to agree with the author, it's all about the context. Violence without meaning, setup and merely for shock value fails. Context is what separates the violence and gore of say Evil Dead from Salvador Dali's movie Un Chien Andalou. In one case the context turns it into dark humor and the violence is enjoyable. In the other one of the great artists sets out to truly shock and horrify the audience with a single terrible scene (if you've seen the movie you know the one I'm talking about). Sam Raimi used violence and gore to entertain, Dali used it to hurt his audience. So where does this carry over to game writing. Is this bad writing, a failed attempt to be edgy and shock the audience, or an attempt to hurt the audience?
 

M920CAIN

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May 24, 2011
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Dude wrting this article, let me give you some examples:
1. In Skyrim you can sacrifice a best friend (follower) for a Daedra named Boethiah in order to get some piece of armor
2. In Skyrim you can sacrifice a priest in order to become a canibal for another Daedra
3. In all GTA games players go on killing sprees against police, civilians, anything that moves.
4. Niko, a guy who wants to escape crime, kills so many people in GTA IV in missions in order to advance the plot and he's doing it for MONEY, ONLY MONEY, sure he needs it to get a better life and pay his cousin's gambling problems, but it's still for dirty money.
5. I don't need a 5
6. I don't need a 6
7. Do I need to go on?

Killing the guy via phone in that Michael Mission (I don't have xbox, I saw the mission on youtube) is nothing. It's just murder for the sake of revenge. Michael is genuinely moved by what just happened, he didn't expect a hacker to be so violent and actually plant a bomb in that thing. Michael is reckless, but not the culprit in this case, he was a tool, yes, but these things can happen in real life also, people being used for something they don't want to be a part of, so GTA V didn't go overboard with it.

The game is not sick or overly violent, it's what it is. If anything, we as gamers are sick for playing games like GTA III, VC, San Andreas, IV, V. Simulating the life of a criminal is just that, Rockstar did a masterful job, the moral is that in GTA V a white guy is rich and miserable, so money by itself doesn't bring happiness, crime doesn't pay and all that, his wife's cheating on him, his son doesn't respect him and is insecure about himself cause Michael failed as a father and role model, and so on. Michael is a victim from the first cutscene of the game. Is the victim of his own way of doing things, falling into a life of crime, and somewhat enjoying it. Franklin is what Michael was in his youth, a poor kid, wanting a better life (only difference is his black) and Michael relates to him, and as for Trevor, yes he is a maniac, and no I don't know his story yet, but if I'm correct, GTA V will offer narrative and a perspective on why Trevor is the way he is: been in the army, and all that. The chemistry in the game, from what I've seen is great, the morality is ambiguous, the characters are flawed, not loveable, but identifiable, I'm pretty sure everyone on this forum has a bad side to his personality, don't lie. The characters in GTA V are cynical, and I'm pretty sure this is why most find a hard time liking them.

PS: You mentioned "terrorist act" a few times. In all GTA games you commited terorist acts, either by plot or just player faffing about.
 

grumbel

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M920CAIN said:
7. Do I need to go on?
He addressed that point in the article. All the examples you gave are the players choice, they are optional. If you don't like them, you don't do them. And as for Niko in GTA IV, yeah, that ain't great writing either and it received quite a lot of criticism after the initial hype around the game was over.
 

Phrozenflame500

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Greg Tito said:
shootings here in the U.S. are frightfully common. I don't like to watch the news; I play games for an escape from all that shit.
Well you know, you could always play those high-quality games that don't revolve around guns and shooting nameless dudes in the face like Portal(portal gun) and... uh... Cookie Clicker?

Eh, I'd say that the real reason for the outcry is that most people who play GTA V don't do it for the story. I certainly don't. When I play open world games, I go out of my way to be the biggest asshole ever, dick around as much as possible and don't get immersed to deeply into the story. I feel that Rockstar tried to execute this big Hollywood crime story with GTA IV, realized that it doesn't work with the type of people who play these games and tried to make it more wacky and violent for GTA V... while still keeping that same tone as that Hollywood crime story.

I'd say you put too much focus on story in your review, but everything that has been said about that has already been said, albeit alot ruder.
 

saxman234

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Nov 23, 2011
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Another great read. Skipped the some of the second page to avoid too many spoilers, for when I eventually play this game. Actually this extra article makes me a little cautious about the game now. I know the game has plenty of great qualities and free roaming will be awesome but I do not want to play in depressionville with terrible people that much. It would be interesting if they made the game start right before the crash, and you experience the economic crash, explaining why Michael at least needs to go into crime again. I would have love to see some character development in all three characters. We will see for myself next month when I can hopefully find it for 40 bucks or for when they announce a PC version.
 

josemlopes

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I am curious to know if you played the first 3 GTAs, why were they accepted back then for what they did and are still viable recommendations of good games to play today.

Just look at the intro of GTA 2:

The intro really shows what the game is all about, you are just this thug doing crimes for money and in GTA III it barely touches any sort of motivation for the main character other then money.

I think Greg Tito had very diferent expectations to what a GTA game could be or wants to be, even CJ is a major selfish douchebag.

And I still dont get the part that the characters need to be relatable or that we need to like them to care for them, I liked the movie Pain and Gain and I was interested in knowing what was going to happen to those characters even though all of them were the biggest scum of the earth, I mean, only one guy that shows up in the middle of the movie can be called a morally good or relatable character.
 

M920CAIN

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May 24, 2011
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grumbel said:
M920CAIN said:
7. Do I need to go on?
He addressed that point in the article. All the examples you gave are the players choice, they are optional. If you don't like them, you don't do them. And as for Niko in GTA IV, yeah, that ain't great writing either and it received quite a lot of criticism after the initial hype around the game was over.
Yes and no. The examples about Skyrim do indeed give you a choice, but for GTA itself, you are often/always put in a position in which the only way to advance is to kill. As for free roaming, I bet that everyone who played a GTA game and tried to roleplay killed at least one pedestrian while rushing to get to a next objective, because he/she found it frustrating to drive responsibly in a videogame and speeding caused some nasty unintentional crashes.

In any case, I think we can all agree, that aging is something each gamer has to face. You cannot enjoy the same violence at 30 as you did at 20. You gotta think that something's wrong with a society of people who play a crime simulator game and the fact that we as players anticipate a crime simulator game so much, but that software developer mission isn't a prime example by any means. The whole series can be held accountable for that on the same principles of choice. Hell for choice to really matter, why not have the option to choose at the beginning of a GTA game between being a coop or a crook and advance a story after that choice is made. Would be an interesting statistic on how many players would chose one or the other.
 

grey_space

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Apr 16, 2012
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I liked the article myself.

It was a good backup to the review which confirmed my worries about the game.

Maybe it's an age thing, but as a gamer in my late thirties I've no interest in being forced to play as a group of characters who have no redeemable qualities in an imaginary world where every person you interact with is apparently vapid and selfish.

That reminds me too much of real life.

And I've grown beyond the point of buying a game for the pleasure of running over pedestrians.

Each to their own though.

A few of my (younger) mates got it today and already I've been regaled of a great tales of crashing jetskis and killing scores of prostitutes with a stolen forklifts.
 

Master Taffer

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I've never truly bought into the idea that protagonists have to be someone the player/viewer/reader can relate to, even in minute ways. If that were the case, there are a ton of characters out there that are good guys that I wouldn't engage in. Besides, I don't exactly agree with the idea that these guys are not relateable in some way simply because they happen to be scumbags. Two of these guys have the very relate able condition of being stuck in a state they are unsatisfied with. Just about everyone I know has had that moment where they were unhappy with where they were. The fact these guys go on to do heinous progressively more stuff is consequential to who they are.

I play games like Kane & Lynch and God of War, despite the protagonists being irredeemable horrors. Protagonists being disgusting men doesn't not immediately equate to bad writing. Sometimes people are motivated for the most selfish and un-altruistic reasons, and sometimes those people come out on top.