T w e n t y S i d e d

I think I get what the writer is trying to do with Trevor. And to a certain extent, I think they succeeded. The writer is trying to alleviate the case of ludonarrative dissonance the series suffers from. The story tells us one thing, and the mechanics tell us the opposite. This dissonance peaked in GTA IV, and here in GTA V the designer is finally taking some steps to smooth this out.

On one hand the story is telling us that the protagonist is a generally sane and reasonable criminal and not a mass-murdering supervillain. But then all of the mechanics, the missions, and the player’s own desire to have fun work against this, turning our otherwise relatable protagonist into a madman. Even if we ignore the player’s behavior in the the open world and their crazy driving, the scripted missions themselves require the player character to kill literally hundreds of people. That would be fine, except the cutscenes then depict the character as a much more grounded person. And that would be fine if this was some absurd romp, but the cutscenes usually demand that we take this melodrama seriously.

But Shamus, you don’t have to overthink this. Just understand that the story and gameplay are separate, or that gameplay is exaggerated for the sake of fun.

Yeah, that’s what ludonarrative dissonance is. We have to mentally compartmentalize parts of the experience because they don’t quite fit together. Dissonance doesn’t mean “automatically bad”, but a work where all the elements are in harmony is often better. It’s fine if you can enjoy the gameplay and the cutscenes despite the harsh seams between them. I usually do. But it’s frequently distracting. It can also cause confusion when we find ourselves in the semi-scripted gameplay moments when it’s not clear if the content in front of us is taking place using the movie logic or the gameplay logic.

Trevor doesn’t fix this problem, but he does mitigate it.

This is usually portrayed as a conflict between gameplay and story, but you can also think of it as a conflict between the designer and the audience. The player wants to play with all of these systems and enjoy the empowerment of running rampant in this simulated world. The writer wants to take a bunch of scenes out of different Scorsese movies and string them together into a crime drama mixtape. They want the player to inhabit this story as one of the characters, and not as an outsized god of mischief. The player wants chaos and the writer wants restraint.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Auto V: We Need To Talk about Trevor”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Despite being the progenitor of an entire genre, Grand Theft Auto has never really established a strong identity in terms of mechanics. Some titles have lock-on targeting. Some are free-aim. Some use cover-based combat, others favor run-n-gun. Some make driving feel effortless and arcade-y, while others make the vehicles heavy and cumbersome. San Andreas had this whole territory control mechanic that never appeared again.

Saints Row is an amusement park where you hop from one challenge to the next, picking up whatever activity seems fun. Sleeping Dogs has the Hong Kong / John Woo action flavor. Watch_Dogs has that lame half-assed hacking stuff. But Grand Theft Auto? About the closest thing the series has to a distinct style is the awful scripted mission design where the designer secretly changes the rules to make the gunfight / chase more “cinematic”. Aside from that, GTA doesn’t have a particular mechanic to call its own.

At least, until now.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Auto V: Heists”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.