There has been a particular theory
going round for the last year or so, that "box set" TV has replaced
movies as the preferred form of mass, culturally meaningful entertainment. It
is the likes of Breaking Bad, The Wire and Homeland that are telling us about
modern life now, rather than Hollywood's simplified three-act confections. Grand
Theft Auto V, however, hints at a future in
which that role is taken by games –
or at the very least actively sought by them. Unlike the vast swathe of
wondrous entertainment the video game industry produces, this series cannot be
safely pigeon-holed or ignored by non-players. For the last decade, Rockstar
has wielded a sledgehammer over public perceptions of what video games are or
can be; now it has struck with merciless force.
Set mostly within the glitzily superficial city of Los Santos, a
warped mirror of Los Angeles, GTA V is a sprawling tale of criminal maniacs
self-destructing on a blood-splattered career trajectory to hell. Michael is
the middle-aged thug, obsessed with movies, who pulled a witness protection
deal with the feds after a failed heist many years ago. When his old partner
Trevor, a sociopath who bakes meth out in the desert, turns up in town, the two
join forces with a young black kid, Franklin, who's set on leaving his
gang-infested neighbourhood behind. The aim is a few final high-paying jobs,
but there's a festering resentment between Trev and Michael that goes back a
long way, a fizzing fuse that trails all the way through the carnage.
This three-character format emancipates the narrative,
jettisoning the awkward requirement for one protagonist to be everywhere,
witnessing everything in this vast world. Switching between the characters can
be done at any time while off mission, and all three have their own little pet
projects to get involved with, adding variety and a few amusing surprises:
switching to Trevor usually involves some bodily function or weird violent
episode, while Michael has his dysfunctional family to manage. And overlaying
all this is a huge plot about warring government agencies and corrupt
billionaires.
The result is a freewheeling joyride through genre cinema and
literature: there are psychopathic mafia bosses, insane motorcycle gangs,
xenophobically sketched triads, corrupt secret agents and cynical movie
producers – their stories twist and interconnect, slithering around the lives
of our protagonists. It's dizzying at times, but also daftly compelling, and
the influence of multi-strand dramas such as The Wire is obvious.
On A
Mission
GTA
veterans will still recognise how the game underneath it all works. There is a
backbone of narrative missions that gamers must complete in order to progress,
but beyond them is a vast range of dynamic encounters, side-quests and
money-making ventures, from buying property to managing clubs and playing the
stock exchange (which cleverly reacts to in-game events, allowing you to make
extra cash by buying the right shares at the right time). Most story tasks are
variations on one theme – drive somewhere, shoot something, drive back – but as
with all video game feedback loops, the joy of the system is in the execution.
And boy does GTA V execute.
To say much more would be to ruin the fun of discovery,
but rest assured there are insane stunts, there is massive destruction, there
is military-grade weaponry, and you will be required to jump out of planes. And
helicopters. Combining the sheer scale of the environment with the excellent
physics engine, these escapades throw everything at you, from rural bank-heists
to jet-ski chases, to operating huge industrial machinery. The bigger heists
require mini-preparatory missions (hiding getaway cars, picking novelty masks)
which help build the tension, and subtly add to the feeling that what we're all
doing here is acting in our own version of Michael Mann's film Heat. While
certain ideas are repackaged and chucked straight back at you several times,
you're carried along on a rush of euphoric action and shock – mostly because
the world looks and behaves as though all this makes sense.
Satirical Scope
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Indeed,
Rockstar North has built an extraordinary universe that functions not only as
an exciting, diverse setting but also as a pulverising, nihilistic satire on
western society. Reality TV, celebrity magazines, social media, plastic
surgery, pop psychology books – all get savaged via the often hilarious
commercials on the game's many radio and TV stations. Even games themselves get
hit: an advert for Righteous Slaughter 7 promises "the realistic art of
contemporary killing".
This isn't just confined to extraneous detail, it slides
into the narrative. At one point we see the offices of a giant social network,
Lifeinvader, a spot-on amalgam of Facebook, Apple and Google. The staff all
wear cargo shorts, whine on about organic lactose-free dairy products and treat
their CEO with religious deference. We also get corrupt FBI and CIA agents
(called FiB and IAA in the game), trading drugs and manufacturing terrorist
threats to keep their budgets topped up. Everyone is on the make, everyone is
dangerous, and the game delights in thrusting us into the middle of it as a
willing participant.
Gunfights, meanwhile, are furious, visceral ballets,
fuelled by regular visits to the well-stocked Ammu-Nation stores. while GTA has
learned a lot about organic environments from Red Dead Redemption (the rural
areas of San Andreas are abuzz with wildlife), it has learned its game systems
from Max Payne. The combat is ultra-smooth with a variety of decent, functional
aiming options and a cover mechanic that works almost imperceptibly – the
greatest compliment you can pay to this concept. Limited more by the player's
imagination than by ability, most set-piece encounters are not overwhelmingly
challenging, but they are spectacular - and this is the point. You have to
understand that Grand Theft Auto V is not really a game about story or
mechanics, even if it wants to be – it is a game about spectacle and
experience.
Forgivable Flaws
This is really important because it allows us to forgive the
game's flaws. You have to do a lot of
driving. There are no shortcuts, so every mission involves hitting the highways
to get to the trigger point; and yes sometimes you think "Ugh, not another
car ride". Rockstar North has also developed a slightly irritating
narrative trope that I'll call "the exposition expedition": there are
a lot of long journeys that just seem to be there so that the lead characters
can chat about back-story, or engage in meandering expletive-drenched
conversations on pop culture and psychology – something we probably have
Tarantino to thank for.
Furthermore, the designers don't always make the rules of
the system clear. Some missions will only end successfully if you carry out the
correct action after a specific prompt, while others don't provide a prompt at
all and then fail you if you miss the mandatory sweet spot. The game also has
the habit of simultaneously providing mission instructions via in-game dialogue
and an on-screen text prompt, which at the very least means you miss plot
details, but at the worst means you can be left wondering what the hell you're
supposed to do next because you paid attention to the wrong thing. Or at least
that was my experience; others may be better at ludological multitasking.
Women are, once again, relegated to supporting roles as
unfaithful wives, hookers and weirdos. The one successful female character in
the story is suspected of just wanting to screw her boss. Of course, GTA is
essentially an interactive gangster movie, and the genre has a long history of
investigating straight male machismo at the expense of all other perspectives,
but it would have been wonderful to see Rockstar challenging that convention.
It's fine to parody the idiotic misogyny of violent men, but how about doing it
by providing their opposite? It seems Rockstar North's all-male writing team is
too in thrall to Tarantino and Brett Easton Ellis to really consider this.
Seductive Vision
Ah
but… The genius of GTA V is in the sheer seductive force of its vision. The
visuals are astonishing – just astonishing. Surely pushing this ageing hardware
to the limits, we get the dense downtown with its soaring skyscrapers and
murky, rubbish-strewn back alleys. But then out into the country, we have
rolling grasslands and desert stretches, coyotes roaming, the shadows of eagles
swooping overhead.
The world drags you in. It begs you to explore – and then
it rewards you. You feel every millimetre of the landscape has been
thoughtfully handcrafted with the curious gamer in mind. This seems an odd
compliment – surely every video game landscape is crafted in this way. But so
often, open worlds are built from architectural filler – bland unending
landscapes and cardboard box tenements. San Andreas is a state of contrasts and
extraordinary detail, there is always some interesting new nook to chance on,
some breathtaking previously unexperienced view across the hills toward the
capitalist spires of downtown. Designers often talk about rewarding the player
for exploration, but usually do so with facile Easter eggs, hidden away in
mundane backwaters. From the raging rivers running through the mountain
wilderness parks to the beautiful modernist architecture tucked way in the
Vinewood hills, Grand Theft Auto V is – like Fallout and Skyrim before it – a
form of virtual tourism.
The talent too is in the emergent moments the system
produces. Driving to a violent heist with Don Johnson's Heartbeat playing on
the radio, the freeway clear before you; flying a crop-dusting plane up the
contour of Mount Chiliad, so that you reach the peak just as the red sun falls,
sending rainbows of lens flare through your cockpit screen; clipping a police
car during a chase, sending your own vehicle spinning off the overpass onto the
roof of an liquor store. All fun, all about you the player.
Complicity and Culpability
And however familiar the GTA set-up is, it still works. Blasting
your way out of impossible face-offs with private armies, streaking through the
city streets in a new car – some will hate the sheer amorality, the relentless
seething darkness of the narrative. [Spoiler] Many
too will be horrified by an interactive torture scene that pushes the player to
perform acts of cruelty on a defenceless victim [spoiler ends].
But GTA is all about complicity and culpability – what is the player prepared
to do in this world? How much are they responsible for? During the game,
Michael makes several visits to a shrink, complaining that he feels someone
else is controlling him. Rockstar wants to interrogate the relationship between
player and game – or at least snigger at the psychopolitics of it all.
Yes, some people will hate GTA V. Some, like me, will
thoroughly enjoy it while acknowledging its complications, its shortcomings as
a narrative adventure. Last of Us says more about humanity in five minutes than
GTA V does in its 70-plus missions. Five stars for such a troubled proposition?
That'll confuse and anger a few people, I know it. But no one constructs worlds
like Rockstar and this one is worth many, many hours of exploration. It is fun,
so much guilty, ridiculous fun. It is beautiful to look at, it is jammed with
ideas, and when the free add-on, Grand Theft Auto Online, comes out in October,
it will offer a compelling multiplayer experience, where participants combine
and face off in gigantic turf wars.
And then GTA V is also a monstrous parody of modern life –
our bubbling cesspit of celebrity fixation, political apathy and morose
self-obsession. I half expected it to end with the Houser brothers dressed as
Papa Lazarou from League of Gentlemen staring into the camera and whispering
seductively, "you all live in Los Santos now". But they don't need
to, of course. This misanthropic masterpiece says it all for them.
Source: theGuradian
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