Confessionals: Grand Theft Auto V has some great narrative moments

Confessionals: Grand Theft Auto V has SOME strong narrative moments

GTA V SPOILERS! From a dude who has not finished the game.

I’ve drank the Rockstar energy drink (sorry) and it is quite delicious, but leaves an odd taste in my mouth. Rather than making a terrible analogy, I should probably explain myself.

When it comes to GTA, number four was the first on that I actually owned. Before I picked up GTA 5, I decided to pop number 4 in just to see how far I got. I was about 15 hours into the game, but I quickly realized that I was only about an hour or so into the story. When I started playing the game, it became clear what I had spent all those hours doing; driving around listening to music, exploring the nooks and crannies of the city and causing chaos while attempting to get that elusive 5 star wanted rating.

For me, I had a lot of fun playing GTA 4 by simply exploring the world and doing everything besides the main quest. So I basically played it like I play Elder Scrolls games. I messed around and experienced the world, but I did not go down the path that Rockstar so carefully crafted for us players to experience. The overt crime movie references and the over the top characters never seemed to draw me in.

 

This time, however, I decided to go all in and play the story as opposed to dicking around and ignoring the main quest. At this point, I am sure you are familiar with the three heroes main characters of this game: Michael, Franklin and Trevor. While I am not a huge fan of any of these characters in particular, they do offer some interesting narrative moments.

Michael probably has some of the most interesting qualities of the bunch. He is a man in his 40’s who laments a bygone age that he probably never obtained in his youth. Throughout his conversations with various characters, we begin to find out that he always saw himself as the “good guy” despite the fact that he was stealing and killing as a career criminal for a large portion of his life. During our time playing as Michael, we also become increasingly familiar with the fact that Michael is obsessed with 80’s movies, specifically those of the crime genre. Suddenly his delusions of grandeur begin to make a little more sense. This becomes further evident at his impotent rage towards his family and their complete lack of respect for him. As the player interacts with Michael’s wife and kids, he constantly struggles to do the right thing, but he always goes about it the wrong way, often with disastrous results. Because he was the “hero” of his story and got away scot free (or so he thought) with the money, he felt he had won. Why would he have to work hard for anything else after that? His family owe him gratitude for all he provided for them, right? Michael never really knew how to carry on afterward because his movies never really showed him how to carry on after he got the big payoff.

Michael’s longing for that ideal world that the movies of his youth presented to him is most evident in the first mission he takes from a movie icon he idealizes named Solomon. When he is coercing a whiney underpaid actor to sign a movie contract, Michael goes into a tirade about how this actor should be grateful that he gets to be part of something so special and so inspiring. As a player, one can practically hear Michael’s desperation to live that life he has witnessed so many times on the silver screen. While I don’t particularly care for Michael, I find his struggle very interesting.

Franklin has the ambition of a young man who wants more out of life. Sure his “more” includes getting involved with highly illegal activities, but this is GTA, so... that much is a given.  In any case, Franklin suffers from the affliction of being surrounded by idiots. He is often smarter than many of the characters he is surrounded by (including Michael and Trevor in some cases), but he still goes along with their crazy schemes. This is no more evident than when he is saddled with his friend Lamar. Poor Lamar is a stereotype ridden man who seems to think he is a big time baller, but tends to screw up often, getting Franklin into a lot of trouble in the process. During one mission where you are tasked with repossessing expensive cars, Franklin laments to Michael that he got out of being a repo man and now Michael got him involved in a job that put him back where he began. Despite his resentment, Franklin continues to help Michael and even Trevor when they need him.

The player begins to notice a pattern: Franklin, more so than the others, is often willing to help others while expecting little in return. During many of his “Freaks and Strangers” missions, he often helps these people, whether he is taking shifts on a tow truck, delivering marijuana packages or helping an adrenalin junkie out of a tree. Franklin complains about the situation while he doing it, but he keeps doing it. It slowly becomes clear why Franklin keeps finding himself stuck in these situations. He systematically does it to himself. It should be noted that he is incredibly disrespectful to almost everyone he encounters in the game. He may be helpful, but he sure is a dick while he helps out.

Then there’s Trevor, the insane Canadian who lacks most forms of empathy and human decency. He may be the most volatile of the bunch, but unlike the others, he is actually quite comfortable with current state of being. Because of this, his twisted morals are actually significantly more consistent than those of Michael and Franklin. Basically, he does fucked up shit and he is totally cool with it.

He also has this strange sense of honour. If the player pays attention, he/she may notice that Trevor is significantly more respectful to the women in the game than the other two characters. He uses less shaming gendered language than the others and even yells at characters who insult women in front of him. Don’t get me wrong. I am not defending the misogyny in this game, as there is a lot of it and it makes my brain hurt. All I am saying is, rather surprisingly, less of it comes from Trevor.

These are by no means deep character analyses on Michael, Franklin and Trevor, nor are they meant to be. Here I am merely pointing out small aspects of the characters that I found quite intriguing. Personally, I find these traits far more interesting than the bulk of the dialogue and interactions in the game. Regarding the overall narrative, I find it interesting that this game does not tend to glamorize life of crime. Because of their lifestyle’s Michael is stuck in a suburban hell, Franklin ends up with more trouble in his life than he could have imagined and Trevor lives in squalor. On top of all that, when you engage in criminal activity during the story missions, you are often coerced into doing it or you are doing so at the orders of someone more just as corrupt as your characters. All in all it is interesting stuff.