I've got a problem with Grand Theft Auto, particularly V where that problem is most obvious. It's a problem of tone in writing and worldbuilding that's a carryover from the older days of GTA when they were more out and out comedy games where every bit of written dialogue and every car name, every billboard or sign, anything you can think of had to be a joke of some kind. When they were top down 2D arcadey sort of games that worked well but it stumbled a bit with the transition to 3D and toward the concept of 'realism'.
TL;DR
I think Rockstar's comedic writing is shit and has held back potentially good writing like a metaphorical ball-and-chain. The problem with their comedic writing is exemplified in GTA V where the jokes are lost in how miserably cynical every aspect of the characters and world is and attempts to insert jokes are so uncomfortable as to feel grotesque. Red Dead Redemption 2 almost entirely eschews Rockstar's usual style of comedy and instead focuses on telling an honest, serious story that treats all of its characters like real human beings and pulls it off remarkably. I hope with GTA VI Rockstar walks the same path as RDR2, but it's entirely possible they won't. I'm not interested in playing the game if its tone is anything like V's.
Grand Theft Auto IV is like if every other page in MAD Magazine was a serious article about PTSD and the horror of war
GTA IV is, I think, where Rockstar made their first attempt at telling a proper serious story in the series and while I feel they did quite well, it was still wrapped in this kind of uncanny parody of modern America where every business name is a stupid double-entendre like the internet cafe called Tw@ and every character you meet outside of the critical path (and most within it) is a cynically presented asshole who is intended as some kind of hamfisted commentary on a certain aspect of American culture. It felt unclear if you're supposed to laugh at them, nod your head and say "Ahh yes, so true", or both. A lot of the time my reaction was neither, just frustration or confusion. Meanwhile our protagonist, Nico Bellic is played almost entirely straight and he reacts to these weirdos with the same stunned confusion as I did most of the time. He's a fantastically written and acted tragic figure who at times seems frustrated to be sharing space with these frustrating caricatures.
Red Dead Redemption is not so wild of a west
A couple of years later Rockstar brought us Red Dead Redemption. Like GTA IV it attempted to tell a serious story and they really pulled it off, RDR's story is fantastic. Being set a whole century earlier than GTA IV also allowed RDR - maybe inadvertantly - to avoid the uncanny parody that permeates GTA's world. It's set in the last of the American frontiers and there's not so much civilisation to speak of and definitely no internet cafes. That kind of parody is mostly relegated to the completely optional newspapers that you can buy at various points in the game, (and which you could very easily never realise exist) which if I recall usually have silly recountings of some events of the game, joke advertisements and joke sidebars about news abroad.
RDR still tries to lean comedic though, but instead of trying to twist the well done western theme they have accomplished, leans almost entirely on characters which, rather than being cynical parodies of American culture are more like cynical parodies of wild west character tropes. You spend a lot of time with Nigel West Dickens, the slimy, greedy and cowardly snake oil salesman; Irish, who is every stereotype about sneaky mistrustful irishmen you could think of; and Seth who is a dirty, paranoid, graverobbing prospector. These characters are played entirely for laughs so at least there's a bit of clarity there, nothing hits close to home or feels like it's trying to wink-nudge about some kind of truth you should be reading from it. The game also has its fair share of well-written, relatable, strong and earnest characters who almost feel conspicuous in the lack of a 'joke' to them. Bonnie Macfarlane, Landon Rickets, Marshall Johnson are some of the highlights of the game. While conversations with the comedic characters are usually a repeated pattern of that character saying something dumb which they're then told is dumb repeated for however long a horseride to your current objective takes, conversations with these good characters usually talk about things like philosophy and morality and are used to bring out the best of both themselves and our hero John Marston. They make you wonder why Rockstar doesn't try to do more of this instead of falling back on immature, ham-fisted parodies that just make you feel confused and awful.
Grand Theft Auto V is what happens when writers confuse parody with misanthropy
So here's the biggun', GTA V. The sequel really doubled down on the cynical parody aspect. There are 3 main characters and only one of them is close to likeable. The others are an even-by-GTA's-standards wretched psychopath and literally just Tony Soprano - like not even a parody, this character and everything surrounding him is stripped straight out of The Sopranos and given a fresh coat of paint. He's in a different situation sure, but it's the same character right down to the members of his family who feel like shitty cynical versions Tony Soprano's family from some asshole's fanfiction. Every single person in this game is awful, it's a world full of people who are the worst possible versions of themselves and nothing feels anywhere close to real, but they no longer feel like a parody of anything in particular and it doesn't feel like it's an attempt at comedy anymore - they're just shitty cynical human beings. There's no 'point' to be gleaned from their behaviour other than 'people fucking suck'.
This translates to an incredibly grim and cynical overtone for the whole game which unfortunately rubs up against actual(?) attempts(?) at comedy(?). You've probably gathered by now but I don't think much about Rockstar's comedic writing, it's tolerable at best and at worst it's juvenile, shallow, spiteful, and downright corrosive to everything surrounding it. So now GTA V is trying to tell a serious story filled with depressingly cynical characters who feel like they came from the fucking dark timeline where everybody sucks the most and the geniuses at Rockstar decided they should be used for comedy, particularly Trevor the hateful, monstrously unredeemable psychopath. This results in dark and fucked up scenes where someone will say or do something that was written as a joke but because of the context and the people involved cannot possibly be funny. There's a very graphic torture scene in the game where you, as Trevor, must apply several torture methods to a kidnapped person who alternates between crying, begging for his life and... lamenting that he just had his teeth whitened or some shit when you pull them out with pliers. It's a horrific scene that I think already went way too far but then combined with the attempts at humour it's not funny, it's somehow more horrific. Specifically it's horrifying that the game's writers thought this was a good idea, it's fucking disgusting. Now I'm all for tonal whiplash played for comedy, some of my favourite games and movies do it very well, but that only works when there's good comedy writing and GTA V is completely devoid of that. GTA V is a game of grotesque people doing grotesque things that occasionally cuts to an image of a clown having the shit kicked out of it and expects you to laugh, or maybe expects you to think "Yes this does reflect our society" but it is so far removed from reality and humanity that you'd have to be 16 years old to do either of those things.
Aside: I can draw a direct line from hating GTA V to loving Yakuza/Like a Dragon
It's a sort of unrelated to the point I'm going for, but GTA V was also the first game that I played where I actually felt upset at the game and myself as a result the level of violence taking place. It was sort of a revelatory turning point for me in that way, so I guess it was good for something.
The revelation came to me in an early mission where you're stealing a truck or something. An alarm is triggered and security guards arrive by the van-load, who you gun down from an elevated position, murdering dozens upon dozens of human beings. This isn't a ride-or-die type situation where everything is hinging on this, it's one step of many to get a tool you need to complete your bigger plan further down the road. 2013, I would have been 18 at the time, and as I gunned down the fifth or sixth van-load of human beings in that mission I realised how incredibly fucked up it all was, and ever since I've had a lot more trouble empathising at all with characters who kill without like, some kind of remorse which sure has made a lot of media harder for me to enjoy.
The ultimate counterpoint to GTA on this subject (and honestly, most others) is Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's Yakuza -> Like a Dragon games which manage to show frankly extreme violence, but never ever undersell the value of a human life or the moral and spiritual cost of taking one. Playing Yakuza 0 helped me untangle a knot in my self which had been hanging around since 2013. Thanks RGG.
Red Dead Redemption 2 walks a brighter path
So Red Dead Redemption 2 rolls around. I'm a bit soured on Rockstar but I liked RDR a lot so I'll give it a try. I didn't like RDR2 much at first, I couldn't put a finger on why but I was constantly on edge, like I felt like something was wrong and I was waiting for something to drop which never quite did. I eventually realised what I had been waiting for which me so guarded, and that was Rockstar's trademark comedic writing. RDR2 is tonally played very straight, characters are written as complex human beings and not one-track jokes. There's a large cast of supporting characters who stick around for almost the entire game and you get to experience their joys and their sorrows, you see their flaws and weaknesses and you're given ample material to empathise with them, and as the case might be with a gang of murderers and thieves, find the limits of how far empathy can be extended to some people. Nobody is a stereotype or reduced to a single character trait. Even minor characters from sidequests are fairly fleshed out and treated seriously. There are some side characters who are written for comedy, but it rarely feels cynical or like the writers have created a character to punch down at, instead it's more like it's celebrating and having fun with the quirks that people often have. The result is a world and cast of characters who you really care about, the things that happen to and around them actually matter. They feel real.
I'm not sure how much overlap there is between the writers or directors of RDR2 and Rockstar's other games, but this game really shows that they can write a mature, serious story that has plenty of points of levity despite the seriousness. I felt put-off by the game at first because I was waiting for them to shit the bed before I even realised there was a bed to be shit, and thankfully it never happened. When I realised that's what was bothering me, and that Rockstar's usual style of comedy was largely absent from it I started to really enjoy the game.
Grand Theft Auto VI is successor to both GTA V and RDR2 but its writing can only follow in the footsteps of one
So for me the big, massive, crushing question is: can/will they take the same approach with GTA VI? They've shown what they can construct when they're not trying to write comedy and it's beautiful. RDR2 really demonstrates how much they were held back by their attempts at humour and how great their narratives can be when taken seriously, how rich and deep their characters can feel when they're written as human beings and not tired jokes. With GTA VI the fear is they won't do what they did with RDR2, it's a different franchise after all and they've got to make a Grand Theft Auto game which means Cluck'n'Bell and Tw@ and people calling their bitch wife a cunt in every single line of dialogue they have, but that doesn't have to be what GTA is. They can simply not do that and they'd be all the better for it. Ironically RDR2 managed to have better comedy in it by trying to do far less comedy. Bad comedy has the pitiable effect of making everything surrounding it less funny, so when every inch of your game is stuffed with the same bad comedy it infects whatever nuggets of good comedy that might have been hidden away. It's hard to laugh when you're already cringing.
There's not a chance in hell I'll buy GTA VI when it comes out, but I will be tentatively checking out reviews and gameplay clips. If the game threatens to fall into the same bilious tonal pit as GTA V then I'm out, I could not be less interested in what it has to give. If it walks the path of RDR2 though, I'll be more than interested. Whether or not it can then deliver with the same level of quality as RDR2 is one thing, but on tone alone it might get my foot in the door, and I'd like that. I don't want to hate the game, I like enjoying things. I really hope GTA VI gives me the chance to like it.
