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| What a beautiful day to become a criminal again. |
Following an impulsive desire for revenge, Michael de
Santa has torn down the deck of a house belonging to Martin Madrazo, the leader of
the Mexican cartel in Los Santos, and now they owe him two millions and a half.
Well there’s a reason to go out and commit crimes, huh?
 |
Trapping phones doesn't sound like the type of
criminality that I'd be a part of. But hey, sometimes you
gotta do stuff you don't like. |
In order to go back to a life of heist, as he desires,
Michael contacts one of his old friends, Lester, a handicapped genius who can figure out plans on the spot. He’ll be happy to help… as soon as we complete a little task
for him. There’s that new phone prototype about to be revealed by the company LifeInvader,
this world’s version of Facebook. Michael dresses up “hip” and “trendy”, infiltrates the place, helps a guy with
his virus-laden computer, then traps the prototype with a device created by
Lester. Then we just go home and watch the prototype reveal on TV. When Jay
Norris, the clear Mark Zuckerberg pastiche, presents the phone, Michael calls him and... BOOM! On live TV! Oh good, we just committed terrorism. Nice upgrade from bank heists! I
don’t see this blowing up back in our faces anytime soon!
 |
Well... that is certainly a novel way to kill someone, that's
for sure... By GTA standards,. anyway. |
 |
I mean, it's not a perfect representation of real-life
stock trading... mostly because we influence it way too much. |
That’s okay, Norris was an asshole anyway. Like
everyone in that world. Might as well nuke it all right away. The following
conversation with Lester does reveal another element of interest in this game:
Thanks to their Internet, you can actually follow stock information, invest in
some companies before they get big, and then re-sell the stocks just before you
participate in a story event that will make them plummet. Criminal? This game
is all about criminality anyway!
LifeInvader, stock trading, a parody of Twitter…
delving into this bonus material just shows the insane amount of detail put
into this game by the developers. The in-game Internet can also lead to a LOT
of foreshadowing for stuff you’ll be able to do later, involving people,
organizations, and so much more.
 |
I suppose it's good to check the merchandise before coming
back to... "take it". |
Anyway, time for a heist. On the way to Lester’s holdout,
we get called by the guy who let us into the LifeInvader offices, Rickie
Lukens, who has caught on to us. He says he’s out of a job after the stunt we pulled. And he might actually be useful: See, for a heist you need a getaway driver, gunmen, and a
hacker. You will often meet people who can be useful in your heist teams, and then
it’s all about finding the most useful people or the ones who’ll take the
smallest cut off any successful heist. In the end, your choices will make a big difference. Gunmen can die in these heists, after all.
 |
Pick a way to get things done.
All-out violent? Or all in finesse? |
Michael and Lester decide to go for a jewelry store first,
and Michael uses special glasses to scout the inside and the outside of the store. Back where they plan the heist, Michael insists on adding Franklin
to the team. Yeah, I agree! We choose whether we want the hard way or the smart
way (I picked smart), then choose our team. You usually get to choose the way to do the heist, which changes the missions made available to you. It can also radically change the outcome.
On the next mission, Michael goes on a bike race with
his son Jimmy (probably to show that you can redden your ass on a bicycle even
in a game where you can steal cars at will), then takes his daughter Tracy away
from big-shots of the porn industry that she was trying to impress. After this
interlude, we steal a truck full of the sleep gas needed for the “smart way” to
rob the jewelry store, and then we also get an exterminator’s van.
 |
| Smoke bombs? I suppose sticky bombs |
 |
Take everything in sight! Maybe I should steal a little
something to give to Amanda... Nah, Michael's wife
would rather get a gift from a tennis instructor. |
For your first heist, if you act as needed, everything
goes fine. Franklin throws cans of gas
in the ventilation system. When the people inside are knocked out, the crew
barges in and steals as many jewels as they can. The time they get to do this is limited by the talent of the hacker you picked. Then we flee on a high-speed bikes through the subway and the
sewers, later catching a van driven by Michael in order to escape the cops at last.
Then we go back to the hideout, and voilà. Lester will sell back the stuff, and the profits will be split among the
crew, based on the percentage cut they request. Don't worry though, this mission is made so that you still have 2.5M$ left on the side to pay Martin Madrazo.
 |
| I mean, who wouldn't go dirt-biking in the sewers? |
 |
I mean, I guess we could party, but first Lester has to do the
boring part and sell off the jewels to get us the money. |
And as illegal as it may be, to see it succeed fills
one with pride. Oh, it’s wrong, it’s so wrong. But at the same time, we worked
hard to make this succeed, and it succeeded! I should point
out the very fluid, rapid switch between characters during the heist,
definitely a highlight. You never struggle because of the switch, and can deal
with the new situation and keep going. Switching between Michael and Franklin never slows you down, and most importantly it doesn't leave you wondering what to do next as the characters, roles have been clearly defined before the action began. It’s awesome.
 |
How old is this guy? Younger than he looks.
Don't do meth, kids. |
Not everything’s great though, as during their escape,
Michael used his catchphrase to a guard (“We forget a thousand things every
day, make sure this is one of them”) and that witness repeated it on the news. We cut to somewhere else in ther state of San Andreas, where a disheveled guy is fucking a meth-addicted
woman, hearing the phrase, and leaving… making sure to kill that woman’s angry
boyfriend on the way.
Folks, say hello to Trevor Philips. What a ray of
sunshine. Nah, you know I’m sarcastic – he’s the perpetual darkness falling over the city. The most depraved playable character in GTA V, possibly the most
depraved of all characters in the game. Definitely the most depraved character in any game I've played, that's for sure.
 |
| "Any Hole's A Goal" sounds like an anthem for the depraved. |
 |
Before being a career criminal, Trevor Philips was an Air
Force pilot, or came close to; but a psychiatrist refused to
let him enter the army. Him? Such a balanced individual?
But he is made to go to war! |
Oh, and after killing this guy, he goes out to kill
most of the guy's biker gang, the Lost MC, for good measure. After which, he decides
to look for his old bank-robbing pal Michael Townley. But that’s not all he has to do; that biker gang is
also sending shipments of weapons to boats on the sea, so we kill the guys in
charge of that operation and then steal a plane in order to make that delivery
ourselves. Have I mentioned that, on top of selling meth, Trevor is also an
arms dealer? He’s like all the worst traits of a GTA player character, rolled
in one! Add to this his appetite for chaos, destruction and mayhem, and his
horrible driving skills and… He IS all the worst traits of a GTA player
character!
Michael and Franklin are keeping a low profile after
the jewelry store heist, so you can’t go back to them. Trevor is the only
option for now. Besides, it’s not like you’re going to run out of stuff to do.
You have the entire north area of the map, that’s a gigantic piece of land. You
seriously don’t have an idea of the scope of this map until you take a few
hours to explore it as any protagonist (though Trevor's missions are all over the place, so he's probably the one you'll use for exploration). You can get tons of various side-quests, whether
it’s capturing (or killing) some low-rate criminals or going hunting with
Cletus the local yokel. One random event also has Trevor save a
woman from the side of the road; she was a getaway driver and the score she was participating in went wrong, so Trevor brings her to some friends of hers and, from that point on, we
can rely on her as another possible getaway driver for our heists. Awesome.
 |
Killing the criminal targets nets less money than capturing
them. But Capturing them is more difficult...
But I suppose it's a better challenge, then. |
 |
| Nothing better at night than a nice little bonfire. |
The next few missions involve Trevor trying to expand
his market by getting a deal with two guys of the Chinese Triads: The ecstasy-addicted son of Triads leader Wei Cheng, and his translator. The deal on meth is
blown when bikers come to attack the meth lab just as the visitors were about
to see the operations, and the deal on weapons is broken as well shortly
afterwards, so Trevor goes on a rampage against the guys that were selected by the Triads instead… a whole family of inbred hillbillies. What a sensitive game that aims
to offend nobody with its flowery violence and cutesy assassinations. Oh, and
for good measure, how about spilling gasoline, setting the house on fire, and blowing
up the meth lab and the whole fucking house? It’s not like we’re gonna mourn
these guys.
 |
Only two types of people walk away nonchalantly from an exploding building;
Heroes at the end of a well-deserved rampage of revenge...
Or a vilain at the end of a rampage. "Well-deserved" and "revenge" optional. |
Back at his trailer, Trevor learns from his juggalo associate
Wade that there’s a Michael de Santa in Los Santos who fits the profile of
Michael Townley perfectly; a wife named Amanda, two kids… We’ll go see that,
but first, Trevor stops by a memorial held by the Lost MC to decimate
whatever’s left of them.
You know, it’s dawning on me, the brilliance of the
main three characters in GTA V. Each of them represents a mindset when
approaching the game as well as the repercussions of criminal life over an
extended period of time – a deconstruction of sorts.
-Michael is the story mode guy, who doesn’t help
people too often, is just interested in doing what matters to him – screw
side-quests, they suck. He’s also a guy who has seen what it’s like to be a
criminal, wanted to get out of it and live a normal life, but is brought back
to it as if something compelled him to (in this case, the story presented by
the game; the implication being that You, the player, take control of him, force him to do the things he does).
 |
Towing really is the sort of thing you'd only do if you
feel the absolute need to help everyone around you. |
-Franklin is the 100% Completion guy; he has problems
refusing anything to anyone, and as a result, he’s the one with the most
side-quests (although it’s a problem and he needs to learn to say no sometimes).
His life as a gang banger, on the lower levels of criminality, are meant to
represent a player just starting GTA, one who will no doubt improve with time –
although he can’t envision the long-term consequences of going up the ranks of
crime.
-Lastly, Trevor is the player character who says “fuck
it” and just aims to be as destructive as possible. Every GTA player has done
it at least once: Shoot at everything around to kill as many as possible, and face
the cops, rack up a 5-star Wanted rating, then try to escape it or keep it for
the longest time. To some people, that’s the only way to play GTA. Trevor also
never stopped being a criminal after the botched heist ten years prior, so he
expanded his activities into meth and weapon deals, and is the most fucked-up
protagonist I’ve ever seen in a video game (including every other M-rated title
I reviewed). He shows just what kind of person a chaotic Player Character would
be in a “realistic” world like GTA. That’s not even getting into his sexual
deviancies!
 |
Trevor is in Los Santos now.
Things are gonna get scary. |
With his rampage on the Lost MC complete, Trevor
drives with Wade all the way to Los Santos, finding refuge in an apartment
belonging to Wade’s cousin. And now, we can go back to control Franklin or Michael
again! Feels like that was ages ago.
Cut to Michael, where we see him again unhappy with
his married life – unhappy with Amanda, unhappy that she’s got some handsome
young yoga instructor, unhappy with his son… Trevor shows up, and confronts
Michael about his “resurrection”. But hey, there will be plenty of time to be
awkward about that later. As soon as we learn that Tracy has gone off to an
audition for a parody of America’s Got Talent, we decide to go get her out of
that. Why? Because we need filler.
 |
I think the creators of cutscenes at Rockstar Studios love
emulating sex scenes way too much. There are already
prostitutes and lap dancers in the game! Did we need this?
A better question would be, do they purposely hire
animators of amateur CGI porn? You know that exists. |
Yeah, it’s one of the issues with this game, there are
many filler missions. Granted, I see the point. A lot of things have to be shown to the player through the story, , but it can be long and
tedious at times. The advantage is that these filler missions usually add a new
gameplay mechanic that hadn’t been explored thus far, or show more about the
three protagonists’ lives. Speaking of, we get to Tracy de Santa’s audition
and, well, what she does feels straight out of a Cards Against Humanity card.
 |
| Seems about right. |
 |
Simply put, Trevor is a bully.
I feel a bit guilty for enjoying the things he does. |
In response to that, Michael and Trevor chase the
show’s host and humiliate him good. Like some schoolyard bullies. Classy. Now,
since Trevor is in Los Santos, a few more side-quests open. You can go on more
rampages involving street gangs as your numerous victims, or you could help a
weird duo of elderly folks obsessed with celebrities. Oh, by the way, since you’ve got money now, you can
actually buy properties around town and see them slowly give you some money
over time. Hurrah for that! Most properties are too expensive at the moment,
but after a few heists, money won’t be an issue, if you catch my drift.
 |
| Hopefully Lester didn't send Franklin on a "snipe" hunt... |
From then on, three missions open, one for each
protagonist: Michael goes to see the FIB agent who put him in the Witness
Protection Program, Dave Norton. He says there’s something big about to go down
and there’s major funding at the key for whichever agency can get their hands
on that info first. Michael is KO’d and sent to the morgue inside the IAA
building to look for said info, but he has to flee after killing his way
through the offices. Franklin is sent by Lester to mess with a pharmaceutical
company that deals in Viagra-type drugs, whose products tend to provoke heart
attacks in a scary percentage of customers. We kill the company's owner and flee, and for
our troubles, we receive from Lester a brand new place to live in at Vinewood
Hills. Franklin won’t be living with his aunt anymore, and that’s for the
better!
 |
You can use construction equipment in this game?
BEST GAME EVER! Forget the killings, the
crimes, the heists... THIS is the highlight!
(No, actually, it's boring as Hell.) |
On Trevor’s side, well, Wade’s cousin Floyd works at
the Los Santos docks and says there may be something of value there. Trevor infiltrates the site helped by his two associates, and we learn to use
construction equipment such as a crane. The worst part of this mission is how
Trevor struggles to climb into the construction equipment, and how easy it is
to fall off the crane, resulting in instant death. Trevor takes photos of the boat getting loaded, and sends the pictures to Ron, who confirms that there’s something extremely valuable in
there. He lets Floyd get beat up, and leaves Wade undercover to repair the
sewage system, because nobody says no to a poop joke in this setting. Now
ecstatic at the promise of an enormous loot, our monstrous protagonist calls Michael and starts planning a heist…
I guess that’ll be in Part 3!
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