GTA V: Satire or Parody

[Ecster]

I really can't stand Dan Houser's writing. Max Payne 3 is one of the worst games I've ever played because I hated the writing so much, I didn't much care for the shooting either. I tried playing RDR and hated the writing there as well, there wasn't even any semblance of story and I gave up when I got to Mexico. I really think if Dan Houser was writing in any other medium, he'd be considered a hack. Just because writing in games is so bad across the board is really the only thing that doesn't make his writing seem that bad.

Why don't you bullet-list a couple of arguments to support your courageous claims? I've never seen anyboby elaborately criticize Dan Houser's writing on the internet's. I think it's time for you to step in the area and show who's the boss here.

Because some of the GTA5's dialogue was great, other varying-bad and some pointless. Houser apparently, IMO, got lost in the mis-mash of three quite different characters keeping their friend- and business- ship on the track to "coexist peacefully" with each other.

Your observations?

 

[Ecster]

Hum, he said that he liked people watching and that the world of Los Santos was well rendered with a lot of people and designs but that the game elements like bad path AI and insane death scenes break it.

Yes, games are illusions but good writing and art can make it so that we don't care that it's an illusion and we just absorb ourselves into the world. Anything that can break that absorption and we immediately take notice and argue lack of investment.

Yeah sorry but no.

Even if GTA can have some bad AI at times its nowhere near as bad as say, every other game, if he complains about how the AI reacts in GTA he might aswell not try to play any game. What happens if you get in front of a person and just keep staring at them in most games? Nothing, most of the times they dont even look at you. In GTA they take notice and sometimes get annoyed, they may leave or they may start telling you to stop and insult you, if you keep staring they may start a fight.

The other example of the ambulance, I would like to hear him say any game that did that flawlessly when most games still have the cops running over pedestrians.


And if the cougar was an example of an insane death scene then what would he think of STALKER?

He saw the cougar before he attacked, he chose to ignore it, there was nothing insane about it.


To me it feels like the game did so much more then others but still had some things that were at the same level making that stuff stick out more, what I dont get is how that is a bad thing since making the game worse overall to compensate those parts that arent as evolved is a terrible idea.

I'm sure ArrogantSignal (pun intended) is one of those guys who clearly have a talent for saying a lot, but certainly nothing of certain to prove their points. These guys are good in politics and other "maskey" stuff.

Errant has almost zero technical knowledge and relies on "evaluation constructs" that he's constructed himself out of big words that ultimately have null value when getting deconstructed for their true meaning.

He provides no examples of some great aspects of GTA5.

All in all, GTA5 is a technical milestone in video games because it combines lots of different gameplay systems into a one coherent package for all of us to enjoy. This is hard to do because nobody else before have done it. It's not reinventing the wheel. It's creating the almost-impossible.

 

[Riotguards]

his entire argument is based on the preconception that GTA SHOULD be a gritty drama or super serious

he's completely missing the entire design of the game, its a remake of life but instead of stupid things being hidden away the stupidity is out in public display with everyone partaking in the act

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

his entire argument is based on the preconception that GTA SHOULD be a gritty drama or super serious

he's completely missing the entire design of the game, its a remake of life but instead of stupid things being hidden away the stupidity is out in public display with everyone partaking in the act

GTA V is quite obviously intended to be a hyper realistic satire of modern (American) society. Some times it manages to score points, at others the point gets lost behind loads and loads of other kinds of humor. Whatever GTA V works is eventually down to the individual players threshold for GTA V's kind of humor. It works for me, but I can also see why people feel the game is too juvenile at times, which detracts from its' intended satire.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Why don't you bullet-list a couple of arguments to support your courageous claims? I've never seen anyboby elaborately criticize Dan Houser's writing on the internet's. I think it's time for you to step in the area and show who's the boss here.

Because some of the GTA5's dialogue was great, other varying-bad and some pointless. Houser apparently, IMO, got lost in the mis-mash of three quite different characters keeping their friend- and business- ship on the track to "coexist peacefully" with each other.

Your observations?

You can't really prove writing is bad as it's all subjective. But here goes a few examples:

I was playing GTAV at work and I already couldn't take the bad writing in the opening bank robbery where the cop says "I saw your face, I'll remember you". What cop/security guard would ever fucking say that? The line makes no sense and isn't funny or anything so what's the point of it? Is it to tell the player shooting the cop is now alright? I can "get" what's going on, I don't need to be told every little thing. In the video linked in the 1st post, the guy talked about how GTAV had to spell out everything to the player about torture.

There's a BUNCH of people that hated Max Payne in Max Payne 3, I'm not nearly the only one. Max was constantly saying how he doesn't expect to live another 5 minutes even though he's always survived really bad situations from in Max Payne 3 itself, not to mention all the shit in the previous games. Just overall in Max Payne 3, the story is just so bland, you don't even care to follow who's who, you don't even care about the people Max is trying to save let alone even care about the bad guys or who they are. Then, there's twists for the sake of just having twists that, again, you don't care about.

In RDR, characters would just start talking about politics/the government to tell the player this game is about something; 1) that's not how people talk and 2) that's not how convey your themes to the audience by telling us what they are, you show instead of telling. Even Hideo Kojima is better at showing (in regards to themes) like Snake beating Liquid with superior genes to show us superior genes don't really matter. I played up to Mexico and there was yet to be any semblance of main story yet. I just quit because the writing was bad and I was not at all enjoying the bland shooting either.

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I want to address a few points, one opinion and one clarification

-he saw a coyote, not a cougar. The cougar jumped out at him from outside his view. most likely, he is commenting on the cougar phasing though him and the "Wasted" comment

- The AI thing may only be more noticeable due to the quality of the game but it's still an issue that does break immersion.

 

[Chaos Isaac]

I think it's badly done satire.

It's really not funny most of the time, and lampshades a lot of what it's doing to even worse effect and really falls flat. It really doesn't help that it's own story derails from what was building up to a heist game to a game about two old jackasses and a black guy. With way too much FBI blackmailing then a piss on it all ending that exemplified how utterly pointless the rest of it was.

Maybe that's the point, but not a engrossing game it made. Or story. Or characters. With a terrible multiplayer.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

I would say it's simply a parody of Americana and the media presentation of America.
Badly done, but still. I think it dones't qualify as a satire as it 1) has no valid points to make, or any suggestions of betterment, and 2) never champions any particular group in any of its scenes. The torture one showcases this, instead of focussing on how fucked up the concept of torture is, it makes a (let's face it, quite bad) joke about the guy that got his teeth removed.

 

[McMarbles]

It's parody. Satire tends to have a point to make.

 

[Batou667]

I haven't played GTA V, so can't really comment, but a lot of this blogger's discomfort seems to stem from a general squeamishness about using sexism or racism for humour, and a mildly entitled view that the game ought to be a highbrow tool of social commentary. Instead, there are writ-large knob gags and scatological humour, and this guy presumes to tell Rockstar that they're doing it wrong - rather arrogant, no? It's their game, they can make it as irreverent, chaotic and apolitical as they see fit. It's sold truckloads, so evidently they're doing something right.

Also, I'm finding rather obnoxious this progressive insistence that humour, parody and satire must always "punch up". Satire sets out to do one thing: find fun in the human condition. There is no obligation for satire to double as a tool of social reform for it to justify its existence.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

If GTA V is satire, its bad satire. Much of it is woefully outdated and lazily written, and honestly so much of it just seems misanthropic, like that somehow everybody is deserving of ridicule, except for me, of course, cuz I'm the one who calls everyone out for being dumb! GTA V is basically one big Holden Caulfield, calling everybody else stupid. Its that whiny little emo shit from high school who thinks "nihilism" means "***** and moan very loudly and publically, with a smug air of superiority, about how everything is stupid and pointless". And then whenever GTA V decides to actually try to be serious about something, to be genuine, it gets close, but then drops off. It reminds me of the jock in english class who wanted to talk in depth, but didn't because they knew that they'd be labeled as a nerd if they did. In that regard, it seems like the game was written by one of those whiny teenage nihilists and by an adult who is much older and well past that stage, but doesn't want to come off as too genuine because then the whiny teenager will think less of them.

Its a shame,because the game outside of it really isn't bad or anything. Its just too afraid to have anything resembling being genuine. Whereas, say, Watch_Dogs never had that because it was trying to be EDGY EDGY ICONIC HAT EDGY EDGY, and never really had that soul, GTA V did, but they bury it because they're afraid to be seen with it.

Pretty much; I think Movie Bob also elaborated in using the characters as metaphor. To paraphrase "If Franklin is representative of the series uncertain future direction and Trevor is a reminder of its uncomfortable past, then Michael is its present: a boring, middle-aged man." It just isn't that clever; seriously, it's commentary on shitty television and LA which have been used for DECADES. And that's before I get into its uncomfortable issues with women, racial minorities, sexual minorities, etc which have been getting very tiresome. Saints Row IV basically pantsed the series (and the self-seriousness) of gaming in general so I really don't know what GTA's place in the writing world is besides being over the hill.

 

[Verlander]

snip

I'm not American and I don't get the joke either.

The purpose of satire is to take something and twist it in a way so as to expose the idiocy of it all. What GTA5 does is take something the writers don't like -- which is seemingly everyone and everything apart from the three main characters and their own writing -- and dress it up in a chicken suit with a pee stain. This can work in a more cartoony setting, and it did for Rockstar all the way up to Bully, but ever since they went for realism Dan Houser's writing just comes across as that of a disgruntled teenager. Instead of putting a twist on something, he just yells really loud about how it's stupid. 'Life Invader... Get it? A middle finger for a mouse cursor... Get it!?'

And all of this would be somewhat bearable if not every character in the game was a giant shitbird. Now you just have every character walking around with dirty undies on their heads screaming about how everything sucks.

Do you not see the absurdity in GTA? Everything is exaggerated to absurdity, "exposing the idiocy in it all". The television talent show? It consists of a man berating the contestants in an over-the-top nasty way. It's commentary on American Idol etc. The beer commercial? It's an exaggeration of the hyper masculine marketing attempts to sell a drink. The radio stations? All absurd and exaggerated as well.

A running theme I see critics of GTA saying is that the targets are directionless, that it's not a clear target. I disagree, the target is very clear: contemporary America. An America where liberals are more interested in animal rights than changing the actual status quo, and where conservatives believe that old fashioned patriotism solves everything. An America of stereotypes and uniformity. An America where consumerism (which is the overarching theme) is considered a moral good in itself.

I also disagree that all of the characters are shitheads. Rockstar are in a difficult position. They won't sell any game as well as they sell GTA, so if they want to create a world as technically amazing as they do, they need to do with with a GTA sized audience. Painting the characters to be somewhat sympathetic or "good" when the game is about crime is, frankly, unrealistic, and would have attracted far worse criticism than they're getting. Not just that, but they're not all shitheads. Roger, the bald one, is another exaggeration - every line he has, every action he makes. Michael simply makes bad decisions, and Franklin's about as sympathetic as you can get while justifying his criminality. He's primary side missions consist of helping a drug addicted friend keep his job by covering his shifts!

If you give a player the world of GTA V, but not the requirement to break the law, there's really not much point to it. How else can you drive all of the cars and engage with the city without breaking the law (remember this is Grand Theft Auto)? However, assuming that you can, you'd need to find the audience to justify the development costs for such a game, and sandbox games where you can't break the law just won't sell. Perhaps the problem isn't so much the game, but rather the audience? Either way, back on point, the game is satire. Perhaps some people don't like how GTA targets all aspects of American culture, but that's what it is. I don't like games that focus their satire too narrowly on a single subject, but that's my personal taste.

 

[Hebby]

It is parody. And why take it seriously? It messes with you even when you try

 

[jackpipsam]

I haven't seen it as either for a long time.

The game takes itself too seriously, I think it's just a thug game. I can't see the satire in it.