T w e n t y S i d e d

For the moment, let’s take the Michael / Trevor conflict, the father / son stuff between Michael and Franklin, the FIB stuff, the Devin Weston stuff, and the Union Depository job, and cram these disparate elements into a cardboard box labeled “Main Plot of GTA V”. If we can really call those five-ish parallel threads the plot, then I think the conflict between Michael and his family is our B-story. Sadly, none of it really works. The writer put in the timeAnd then some., but the framing and tone work against what the writer is trying to do.

The central problem is that this plot thread is about Michael’s love for his family. The way the story is structured, we’re supposed to long for reconciliation. But this can’t work, because the writer frames his family as antagonists.

It’s not even subtle. Michael’s family are heinous people. Sure, Michael is heinous too and they all more or less deserve each other, but the family commits the unpardonable sin of being antagonistic to the audience. They work against the desires of the player. They pick fights, scream at our protagonist, cause problems, and drag him away from the cool gangster stuff the gameplay is designed to support and into crass melodrama that it isn’t.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Auto V: The Kids Aren’t All Right”

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.

For reasons I’ve explained before, I have a firm “no politics” rule here on the site. There are lots of places to have the standard Red v. Blue debates, and most of them are sewers. The last thing I’d want is to play referee in that never-ending screaming match. Having said that, I’m going to break my own rules and make a political statement:

I apologize for the breach of etiquette. I’m not announcing my beliefs to pick a fight or in the hopes that I can sway you to my thinking. In fact, I don’t really have a stake in what you think and I’m certainly not interested in trying to change your mind. If you disagree, that’s fine. We’re still friends as far as I’m concerned.

The only reason I bring this up is because I want to make it clear that I am ideologically in agreement with the author of this scene. My objections to this mission aren’t because I don’t like having “someone else’s opinion” shoved down my throat. My grievances here aren’t based on party politics or tribal thinking. My problem here is that the GTA V argument against torture is so childish and inept that it made me want to disagree.

Of all the things in Grand Theft Auto V that don’t work, the torture scene is the not-workingest. It takes a rare skill to be simultaneously sanctimonious and incoherent. This scene is fractally wrong. As you zoom in on a mistake you’ll see it’s made up of smaller mistakes that are just as misguided as the whole. The last time I was presented with something this dense with problems was the hotel scene in Hitman: Absolution. It’s actually hard to analyze this in an orderly way because the problems are so thick and interconnected. But I’ll do my best.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Auto V: Torture Time With Uncle 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.