1339: Obligatory GTA Post

So I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto V and, as often happens with overly-hyped games that I’ve started to feel sick of the sight of before they already came out, I’ve found myself genuinely surprised to be enjoying it.

This doesn’t make the “hype” problem any less of a problem, though. I get that people are excited about it and that it’s a relatively “important” game from the perspective of it costing a fucking fortune to make and also being one of the last great “big” games of this hardware generation, but the sheer level of hype is actually having something of a negative impact.

You might think that’s a contradiction — any publicity is good publicity, after all — but in GTA’s case the sheer pressure there is to write something — anything — about this fucking game is leading to what I can’t help but feel is a bit of an unrealistic picture.

The cynicism surrounding the game’s characters, writing and story is probably the worst thing. Going in to GTA V relatively “blind” having deliberately avoided as much of the hype as I possibly could, I’ve been surprised at quite how well-written it is. Michael is a sympathetic character prone to bouts of extravagant rage — often manifesting in some of the game’s more spectacular setpieces — while Franklin is a character who is clearly much too smart for the life he’s been living up until this point.

Trevor, meanwhile, whose missions I finally unlocked this evening, is a genuinely loathsome character, but not in the sense that he stops me wanting to play. On the contrary, his loathsomeness is horrifyingly compelling — particularly as he’s not just a blindly raging psychopath and is instead clearly something of a complex character prone to violent mood swings. He’s cracking genuinely amusing witticisms one moment; screaming bloody murder (literally) the next. He’s certainly memorable.

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over the game’s overall sense of morality, and I do think that it’s the most graphic, violent GTA we’ve ever seen. Again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, though; if a story told in a medium known for desensitising people to virtual violence still has the capacity to shock and make you feel uncomfortable, it’s doing its job right. Is it necessary? Perhaps not, but this is the story the writers have chosen to tell and the characters they have chosen to create, and in a game so focused on its unfolding plot — and yes, regardless of all the open-world chaos there is on offer, this is very much a game about its plot and characters — I have to respect the writers’ decisions. Also, we are talking about a series called Grand Theft Auto — a series which has long been known for its strong focus on deliberately being a tosser.

Interestingly, one thing I’ve found with GTA is that I want to “method act” the characters. When I’m playing as Michael, I want to play things straight — drive properly and respectfully, not start fights or cause chaos. When I’m Franklin, it’s similar — it feels particularly right, as Franklin, to stop for the people who’ve had their bag snatched, chase down the criminal and then return it to the person who lost it rather than walking off with it. When I’m Trevor, meanwhile, everything goes out of the window; it doesn’t feel “wrong” to take the most direct route possible to a destination, even if that means flattening every fence and lamppost along the way; it doesn’t feel “wrong” to wander down the street punching random pedestrians in the face.

I had my suspicions before I unlocked him, but now I’m all but completely certain that Trevor is in the game primarily for one reason: to address the most common criticism of GTA IV, which was that the story the game was trying to tell and the freedom to cause carnage were at odds with one another. Using the “method acting” analogy again, it simply didn’t feel right to play Niko as a psychopath who randomly attacked people and stood in the middle of the road with a rocket launcher. The simple presence of Trevor in GTA V — plus the ability to give him a massive beard and a ridiculous scraggy mullet just to make him look even more disheveled than he already is — ably addresses this concern while still allowing the rest of the game to unfold its narrative in peace. Well, as much peace as can be expected from a GTA narrative, anyway.

Is GTA V perfect? No, of course not. Does it have issues that could do with resolving? Perhaps, though I’d perhaps argue not to the degree some people are making out. Is it good, though? Absolutely, and if you’ve been debating whether or not to get it… you should at least give it a look. If it does something that turns you off, fair enough; but it’s certainly well worth a look.