T w e n t y S i d e d

Last week I talked about Michael’s relationship with his kids and how they don’t really work in a dramatic sense. This week let’s wrap up the family drama by talking about Michael’s relationship with his wife.

Amanda picks fights with Michael at every opportunity. If the two of them share a scene, it will only take a couple of lines of dialog before she begins digging at him and trying to start a fight. That’s fine. These two have traded a lot of lies and insults over the years and they’ve both been unfaithful. They’re both trapped in this marriage by the “witness protection” arrangement they have, and neither one of them seems to have much in the way of friends. I understand these people are unhappy.

What Does Amanda Want?

Rather than find herself a nice quiet boyfriend elsewhere, Amanda seems intent on banging guys around the house where her restless retired gangster husband is likely to find out about it. In this story she screws both her tennis coach and her yoga instructor.

This is a good setup for a quirky family drama. Unfortunately, it’s all setup and no payoff. Is Amanda having these affairs at the house because she wants Michael’s attention, or is she just dumb and careless? Is she trying to get Michael to care, or does she want him to leave her alone? At various points in the story you can find scenes that could support either of these contradictory readings. In a storytelling sense, the writer needs to answer the fundamental question: What does this character really want?

The story doesn’t say and it’s hard for the audience to care because she’s so grating. Again, the arguments are usually framed such that Shrill and Hysterical Amanda picks a fight with Totally Reasonable and Trying His Best Michael. Maybe the writer is afraid of giving our protagonist palpable flawsI mean, beyond the flaws of being career criminals and killers., but by doing things this way they undercut one of the major plot threads in the game. Just like they never explored Michael’s over-protective nature towards Tracy, they never explored the root of the conflict between Michael and Amanda. This story is all sizzle and no bacon.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Grand Theft Auto V: All in The Family”

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 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.