"The Fall Of The Omnipotent Video Game Hero" or "Ralph Fiennes Is Pretty Rad"

[Magus]

I have to defend GTA V here--the three main characters are deeply flawed individuals whose masculinity and aggression lands them in deep shit. Michael is driven entirely by his own ego--his rage at his wife's infidelity (which he has caused himself by being a listless and aggressive sociopath) causes him to destroy a multi-million dollar house. His temper has also alienated his son and daughter. Trevor obviously has to live in the ass-end of nowhere due to the incompatibility of his psychopathy with civilization. And Franklin endlessly attempts to take the easy way out of his social circumstances by turning to the criminal underworld--he thinks he can impress Tanisha by throwing money around and driving fast cars, but she sees through his phoniness, and he's left sitting in an empty mansion, his real goal completely unobtainable.

All of them are also secretly vulnerable--Michael has a grandiose vision of himself as an old-school gangster, but he's really a failure on the inside. Trevor has an incredibly strange homoerotic attachment to Michael, and massive abandonment issues. Franklin, as mentioned, is dismissive of his culture and friends, and the rejection of them in pursuit of wealth leads to outward success but inward emptiness.

[greed]

Originally Posted by Magus

I have to defend GTA V here--the three main characters are deeply flawed individuals whose masculinity and aggression lands them in deep shit. Michael is driven entirely by his own ego--his rage at his wife's infidelity (which he has caused himself by being a listless and aggressive sociopath) causes him to destroy a multi-million dollar house. His temper has also alienated his son and daughter. Trevor obviously has to live in the ass-end of nowhere due to the incompatibility of his psychopathy with civilization. And Franklin endlessly attempts to take the easy way out of his social circumstances by turning to the criminal underworld--he thinks he can impress Tanisha by throwing money around and driving fast cars, but she sees through his phoniness, and he's left sitting in an empty mansion, his real goal completely unobtainable.

All of them are also secretly vulnerable--Michael has a grandiose vision of himself as an old-school gangster, but he's really a failure on the inside. Trevor has an incredibly strange homoerotic attachment to Michael, and massive abandonment issues. Franklin, as mentioned, is dismissive of his culture and friends, and the rejection of them in pursuit of wealth leads to outward success but inward emptiness.

The problem with the messages here are the terrible execution of everything outside of the three of them, which massively undermines any sort of message. Michael not connecting with his family is made somewhat irrelevant cause his family is terrible, Trevor being an outsider because of his sociopathy is undermined by basically everyone in Los Santos showing little to no empathy themselves, and Franklin abandoning his old friends is undermined by the most worthwhile person from his old peer group being Lamarr.

GTA5's big problem writing wise was not giving anything real worth or emotion and just being unrelentingly cynical about everything. It's just really pretty boring and immature and not very funny or interesting.
Also being absolutely abysmal at writing women.

Gameplay wise I struggled with it because it was missing a lot of the advancements the genre has had in the SR games and Sleeping Dogs which made it feel really clunky and dated to play even if it looked fantastic.