[Review] Grand Theft Auto V

[Bandolero -]

There are times when I look at Los Santos and think 'why would you even think to build that?' This is, appropriately, a thought that I often have about Los Angeles. In GTA 5's case, the tone is different: baffled wonderment as opposed to baffled, y'know, despair. Rockstar have created one of the most extraordinary game environments you will ever visit. I look at it and I wonder at the vast expense of effort required to render every trash bag in every back alley just so. I marvel at the care evident in San Andreas' gorgeous sunsets, in the way that sunglasses subtly alter the colour balance of the world, in the artfully-chosen selection of licensed music designed to accompany your experience. Everything about Los Santos demonstrates the extraordinary amount of thought and love poured into it by hundreds of developers over many years. The abiding irony of Grand Theft Auto 5 is that everybody who actually lives in Los Santos hates it there.

 

This is the most beautiful, expansive and generous GTA game and also, by some distance, the nastiest and most nihilistic. Rockstar went through a phase, in Bully, Grand Theft Auto IV and the sadly console-bound Red Dead Redemption, of framing their protagonists as anti-heroes. GTA 4's Niko Bellic did some terrible things, but he had a downtrodden charm that helped you like him as you piloted him through the underworld. He was surrounded by people who were larger-than-life but ultimately, beneath the surface, people. Among those people were some of Rockstar's better female characters—Kate McReary, Mallorie Bardas, The Lost and Damned's Ash Butler.

 

                                                                                        

 

Grand Theft Auto 5 does away with all of that, deliberately but to its detriment. Its trio of protagonists occupy a city full of vapid, two-dimensional caricatures, and they flirt with that boundary themselves. Michael is a middle-aged former bankrobber, unhappily married and on the edge of a breakdown. Franklin is a young hood, purportedly principled but willing to do almost anything for money. Trevor is a desert-dwelling, meth-dealing psychopath with a homebrew morality that sits uneasily alongside his capacity for violent cruelty and sexual aggression. The campaign explores their relationship through a series of heists and misadventures as they clash with every L.A. stereotype you might imagine—the bored Beverly Hills housewife, the corrupt fed, the bottom-rung fraudster, the smug technology exec, and so on.

 

 

Against this backdrop, it's only Michael, Franklin and Trevor that appear to have any kind of internal life. I get the impression that this is deliberate, part of the game's relentless skewering of southern California and indicative of Rockstar's waning interest in romantic anti-heroes. Trevor's introduction, in particular, amounts to a particularly explicit '[CENSORED] you' to the characters and themes of Grand Theft Auto IV. GTA 5 is heartless in that way, and as a result I found the narrative difficult to care about. It is ambitious, well-performed, and the production values are extraordinary—but it is also derivative and brutishly adolescent, set in a world where the line between criminality and the rule of law is blurry but where it is always hilarious that somebody might be gay.

 

                                                                            

 

It's an R-rated episode of The A-Team where the 'A' stands for 'asshole'. The campaign's best moments come when your cigar-chomping master strategist, insane former military pilot and talented driver come together, and when you're given the power to choose how to use each of them. These heists are set-piece missions where you pick an approach and perform set-up tasks in the open world before setting out on the job itself. In the best of them, which occur later in the campaign, it really does evoke the satisfaction of having a plan come together. Perhaps you position Trevor on the high-ground with a rocket launcher, Michael on foot with a stealth approach, and Franklin in an armoured ram-raider. With a button press you can flick between the three, dynamically orchestrating a crime caper on your own terms.

 

It is also in these moments that Rockstar's most ambitious storytelling takes place. Your choice of character, crew, and even certain in-game actions have subtle effects on the dialogue. In an early heist, a crewmember dropped part of the score but, as Franklin, I was able to retrieve it—a side-objective that I'd set for myself but that was subsequently reflected in a later conversation between him and Michael. This is another example of Rockstar's extraordinary attention to detail, and if the rest of the campaign respected your agency in this way it might overcome its weaker moments.