GTA V: Too Violent?

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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MinionJoe said:
I'm about 1/4 through the game and I'd prefer to have less violent options available on certain missions. Feels like, too often, you're only allowed the most brutal, shallow, and senseless course of action in a given situation.
It IS a GTA game, mind.

>.>

But seriously, I had one mission as Michael where my impulse was to stealth it. I died, so I tried again, thinking I must have been spotted. Turns out, they didn't need line of sight. The game is scripted in a way where you must fight (and your completion is dependent on headhots anyway, so....).

I don't mind combat, but they drilled in how fleshy and easily killed you are, then they're all "now go have a shootout because I SAY SO!"

With all the "freedom" elements advertised, I'd like a bit more freedom in handling some of these missions.
 

MysticSlayer

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Buchholz101 said:
MysticSlayer said:
As for me, I don't see what the problem is. None of those people are real, and so long as I don't take the game into the real world and start committing actual acts of violence, then there is no harm done. At worst you're disturbed and can't look away, but that's actually a strength of video games--it forces you to confront the disturbing rather than hiding from it--not a weakness.
I think of games as being like a movie where you're in the shoes of the protagonist. A movie in which you have no attachment or sympathy with any of the characters is a movie you probably won't recommend to all of your friends. Even if the victim in that torture scene isn't real, the sympathy you feel for him as he begs for his life is no less valid than the sympathy you'd feel when Simba finds his father dead in The Lion King, or when Rose realizes that Jack has frozen to death in Titanic.

Storytelling as a medium is meant to communicate meaning or invoke empathy in the audience. All that I felt during that sequence was disgust and repulsion, and the meaninglessness of that sequence is even lampshaded by Trevor afterwards when he's driving. There are movies, and even other games, that have used torture, but then it seemed to serve a purpose or the victim deserved it in some way (ex:Taken, The Last of Us). In GTAV, it's seemingly placed only for shock value.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't or don't sympathize with characters in a game, but they are only meaningful to us within the context of the game's world. They bear absolutely no relevance to our world, except in a way I'm going to go into later in this post, and therefore are not deserving of the same moral consideration as people in this world are. The issue I had with your post was that you sort of blur the line between the game's world and our world:

Watching this, it made me question for a moment whether or not the media has a point: video games are ludicrously violent, and the overwhelming amount of Facebook posts I see praising the game seem to confirm that we as a whole are less sympathetic to the victims of such horrifying acts.

Even disregarding all of the seemingly crowbar'd in sex scenes, I feel appalled and disgusted with Grand Theft Auto: V, and I can't help myself but to think less of anyone who praises the game without considering the things it forces them to do.
My issue here is that it puts the victim in the game on the same level as real, intrinsically valuable people who have suffered real acts of torture. This is particularly problematic in the part I bolded. Just because people are praising the game doesn't mean that they are unsympathetic to those who suffer real-world acts of violence, as there is a major difference between a character in a work of fiction and a real-life person. If the game was glorifying the act, then yes, I can see taking serious issue with it, but to my knowledge, it doesn't. It's a negative take on torture, and at worst it is neutral on the subject.

The thing is, this could be used to good effect. If it makes someone uncomfortable, that should get the to consider the acts of violence being committed against real victims of torture and, hopefully, it will spark them to do something about it in the real world. The issue I really take is that so many people are leading some "righteous" charge against GTA V's torture scene and they are doing little, if anything, to figure out what they can do to help real-life victims of torture. Maybe it is a storytelling issue with GTA V that they couldn't translate our discomfort for an in-game act into a real-world response, or perhaps it is just the result of a misplaced righteous cause on the part of those playing the game.

Now, if people got incredibly excited about the opportunity to torture someone and enjoyed it in-game, as in they had fun with it, then I would call into question their moral character, or at least recognize that their ability to immerse themselves in fiction is very low. Perhaps, also, they are simply naive to the actual problem of torture (we are dealing with a mostly teenage audience here). However, sometimes people find enjoyment in the discomfort, but that doesn't mean they condone what made them uncomfortable. Perhaps they realize the benefit of feeling discomfort over fiction at times. The Heart of Darkness is incredibly disturbing, but it also highlights numerous problems with dehumanization, not to mention its analysis of our own moral shortcomings, and that's part of what makes it so enjoyable.
 

Jake0fTrades

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Specter Von Baren said:
That video is messed up. I actually watch movies like Saw and Hostel specifically because they're so messed up, but you go into a slasher movie or that Demonophobia game expecting to be disturbed by what you see. It's good to experiment and figure out where you draw the line. What bothers me is that in GTA it's for the sake of entertainment, and for everyone I talk to that goes on and on about how fun the game is, none of them want to acknowledge how messed up the game can often be.
 

Berny Marcus

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I don't think that we gamers who praise GTA V, are unsympathetic and that we just like the stuff. We know it's fake, I'm sure most of us detest any sort of real world violence like that. However, still we're just human, and even in a game meant to have fun, we can still feel about stuff in it even if it's fake. I'll give an example of me personally, when I was playing Splinter Cell Blacklist, there's an option of killing or sparing the people you interrogate, now that won't really affect the plot of the game, but in the end I spared most of there lives instead of killing them except for a few...assholes.

My point is that we all react differently to things, and I know how you feel about the violent aspect of GTA V however I don't believe people are to unsympathetic if they like to do violent things in a game, but even so we can still react however you want if it makes you uncomfortable. People cry to sad parts of a movie, book or play because that's how they feel, other people will find it sad, but are strong enough to not let it out good.
 

Juan Regular

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I definitely don't think the torture part was there only for the sake of shock. It reminds me of the film 'Funny Games'. It forces players to go through with the torture in order to progress right after in real life they went to a store and choose to buy a game that lets you run over innocent pedestrians, shoot cops that are simply doing their jobs and indulge in all kinds of despicable acts of crime. We bought GTA V to do and more importantly to enjoy this kind of stuff and now we're upset because it took the choice out of our hands and showed us the violence up close and personal for once. Is being forced to torture someone better than choosing to blindly murder innocent people? As long as there aren't any real consequences to the fucked up shit we do in-game and we don?t see what happened after we crushed someone's skull under our tire, it's all fine and dandy. What the game does in this scene is make it unmistakably clear that we, the players, who made the active decision to buy and play a game that lets us piss on the world and laugh about it all have this fucked up fascination and wish for violence in us. That's how I interpreted it anyway.

I can understand people being pissed that this isn't old GTA anymore and they simply don't want any of this deeper meaning stuff in their rampage simulator, that's a very valid point, but I can't understand people whining about how it's too violent and that they should've given us a choice after all the other shit we did in the game. I for one like a good wake-up call once in a while before I continue murdering digital people.
 

Athinira

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Jan 25, 2010
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GTA 5 is too violent indeed.

However, it isn't too violent because of the amount of violence. It's too violent, because the characters and the writing doesn't do a good job at justifying it as being part of the story.

This isn't the same as when you just go on a killing spree yourself. When you go nuts in any GTA game, at least it's a personal decision that the game designers doesn't really have any power over (beyond the fact that they created the sandbox that makes it possible). Working sickening violence into bad characters, however, is something you can blame them for.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
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Simonism451 said:
Additionally, despite your claim it's not merely a cutscene but something that requires player interaction, which distinguishes it from the scene with the biker.
It's a glorified cutscene. It's not even a QTE. Justifying it as a wholly different beast is inane. But then, the torture scene is less involved than the missions in the game that call for headshots.

I guess selectivity is okay.
 

Snotnarok

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Nov 17, 2008
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What should the option be? To skip doing this and miss the point of the story? To feel like your actions are with your character and you're playing the part of a narrative is the point of games to many and if you don't want to do violent nasty things, you probably shouldn't be playing GTA.
 

nymz

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Apr 1, 2010
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After that scene, in the car, Trevor himself says to the tortured man that torture in itself is bullshit and useless, and exists for the torturer, not the torturee. The torturee says that he would have told them everything. Trevor responds that of course he would have, and that's the point. They explicitly state that the whole thing was essentially pointless, and that you should feel bad for enjoying the violence. Trevor likely enjoys it of course, but the game goes out of it's way to show you how despicable this man is. He is a psychopathic, sociopathic, violence-addicted, drug-addicted maniac, and he is "Hell walking on earth".

Everyone says that there is not enough context for the violence, but that's the point. The context is that it is useless, and the torture was pointless. So it was pointlessly put in, to show that torture is pointless. If that makes any sense. I think I have said pointless too many times now.
 

Psychobabble

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Aug 3, 2013
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Athinira said:
GTA 5 is too violent indeed.

However, it isn't too violent because of the amount of violence. It's too violent, because the characters and the writing doesn't do a good job at justifying it as being part of the story.

This isn't the same as when you just go on a killing spree yourself. When you go nuts in any GTA game, at least it's a personal decision that the game designers doesn't really have any power over (beyond the fact that they created the sandbox that makes it possible). Working sickening violence into bad characters, however, is something you can blame them for.
Considering every bit of hands on criticism I've seen is about how the players who have issues with the game just don't like the characters or their actions in the story, I'd say you have an excellent point.

And to the people saying that if you aren't into violence you shouldn't be playing GTA. Think about this for a minute, this isn't a new franchise, it's 5 games into the series. Many of the people who played at least the last 3 games are the ones who are having problems with the 5th installment. If some of your long time fan base is unhappy with the narrative and characters, then there must be a problem with the game this time round. Stop trying to deflect blame by implying the people who don't like the vile characters in GTA 5 are all new to the game series, or completely clueless to the nature of what kind of game the GTA series are.

Now I do understand the argument that how is running people over or clubbing hookers to death any different than your character torturing someone in a cut scene. Honestly the only difference I can see is the players freedom of choice. And if you notice those very same people AREN'T complaining about the violence in the rest of the game. So personally I think the real issue people are having is being straitjacketed into portions of the game where they have zero freedom to make a decision. A situation acerbated by being forced to play characters they personally wouldn't cross the street to pee on if their heads were on fire.

So I think the lesson that needs to be learned from this situation is don't take options or freedom of choice away from your game players just for the sake of your hackneyed little snippets of drama. Games are for playing. Not for watching.