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Pedestrians take calls on their cell phones, and overhearing what they say to their lovers, their mothers and their agents creates an aural kaleidoscope of a culture obsessed with self-image and fame, none of it especially pleasant. Advertisements and billboards for products like Pisswasser beer and LifeInvader, a parody of Facebook, are supposed to be funny, I suppose, but the radio jingles and faux talk radio spots come off as childish instead. The highways, avenues and streets of the urban landscape are artfully represented, evoking specific neighborhoods and locations in Los Angeles just as Liberty City does for New York. The city of Los Santos is as much a character in GTA V as those guys, and it’s just as depressing a representation of humanity. Seriously, Trevor’s introductory scene begins with him screwing a scabby woman from behind, and then stomping her boyfriend in the face until he’s dead when the cuckolded man has the nerve to confront him.
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Then there’s Trevor, who is busy expanding his meth lab empire in the hills outside Los Santos by stomping bikers in the face. When he mistakenly rips down a Mexican gangster’s house – it must be pointed out Michael meant to rip it down, he just didn’t know how much it would cost him – Michael enlists Franklin to help him back into the heist game to make money. Michael is a retired stick-up man, grown sick of his Vinewood mansion, sniveling teenage kids, and cheating wife. Franklin disrespects everything and everyone in his rundown neighborhood, but somehow forges a bond with a middle-aged white man, Michael, in his search for a way to become more than a crackhead. That’s not to say the protagonists don’t end up charming you as you navigate them through their horrible lives. The three men you take control of throughout the game aren’t even anti-heroes. That’s what it’s like to play Grand Theft Auto V. In the former examples, the audience can get behind the anti-heroes depicted for whatever reason and condone their admittedly awful actions, but in the latter group, the subject matter or the protagonist’s morals are skewed too far from the norm to be comfortably witnessed. It is the difference between The Godfather Part 1 and Part 2, between Inglorious Basterds and Triumph of the Will, and between Just Cause 2 and JFK Reloaded. There’s no drive in them even to be the best at what they do, the last American value we afford criminals, but rather they commit these crimes with no lifeline thrown to the audience to pull us along in supporting them. The three main characters of GTAV do terrible things merely to get paid, and deserve no sympathy.
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What’s missing in GTA V‘s story is a sense that the characters have been painted into a corner by various machinations beyond their control, like Niko Bellic of GTA IV, or must commit their crimes to mete out justice, as Tommy Vercetti does in Vice City. But some of the events and missions of Grand Theft Auto V feel more malicious and, well, evil, than the comparatively light-hearted violence of most games, the recent Saints Row 4 being a perfect example. Now, you may say, that’s the hallmark of the crime genre Grand Theft Auto spawned, at least in videogames. But it’s only worth playing if you are ok with being the bad guy. Driving through Los Santos and the rest of Blaine County – a representation of Los Angeles and the surrounding California countryside – is still the highlight of Grand Theft Auto V, and it does make you feel like you are really part of the criminal underworld of a morally bankrupt city. Well, three terrible people really, the game’s major gameplay innovation from its predecessors being that you can play as three different protagonists.