Grand Theft Auto V

[RayvenQ]

Same here, tho I've seen enough from friends who love the series -- One caveat, tho... At least one review (Escapist) raised a few hackles. Their description, in summary: "Looks great, sounds great, friggin' HUGE, plays great, it's fun...But all three main characters are unsympathetic, unlikable scumbags (as opposed to people who "ended up" doing what they were doing for one reason or another)." Just one guy's opinion, of course

If you want a game to never never ever buy, "Call of Juarez: The Cartel" should fit that bill nicely. Search for the name and "Extra Credits" on youtube if you wanna know why (perhaps not if yer squeamish, and deffo not if yer not old enough to buy M-rated games...)

Eh, Out of all the Characters there's only really one thats a scumbag, but even then he has his moments where he's not quite so bad (torture scene spoilers) At the end of the torture scene, rather than just killing the guy, which is what you'd expect from a psycho like Trevor, he lets the guy live and escape and even in his bad moments, there's only really a small handful of moments in the game that stands out as real scumbag behaviour, the rest of the time, he's just a volatile, violent temper that's easily pushed.

Another character is like a old warhorse who just wants to live his live in peace, but falls toward his past, more violent self when pushed and made to, as for the last one, he's just a guy trying to make his way in the world, albeit through crime, and actually wants to get out of the life. Out of the main characters, there's only one I am really unsympathetic towards, but he has his moments. To describe them as unsympathetic, and unlikeable and even people who ended up doing what they were doing for reasons, is really unfair on the characters and the writers. Hell, even the most unlikeable character (to me) has a few redeeming traits, namely a weird sort of loyalty to another of the characters that's made apparant after a series of events where you'd expect him not to be loyal.

and Jay, thats my way of helping out the cops in random events, since you can't take out criminals with violence since that gets the cops on you too, I've taken to just hurling my body towards the criminals in an effort to disrupt them to help out the cops.Also, running up to random civs on the street and KOing them in one punch is incredibly satisfying, although it makes me feel bad that I enjoy it.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Agreed, Trevor is probably the most unsympathetic character in the group-- a violently psychopathic drug- and gun-runner-- but he has his redeeming qualities. He's very protective of his friends (even though he's horrible to them) and he's usually aggressive toward deserving parties. (Corrupt officials, racists, etc.)

Michael is less unsympathetic than Trevor, but when he's an asshole to his own family-- yelling at his wife and daughter, and caring more about his yacht than his son-- you kind of find it hard to completely like him. Rayven hit the nail on the head that he's a retired monster who is trying to put that behind him, but the urges to flex those old muscles are still there, and dragging him back into his old ways.

Franklin's by far the most sympathetic of the playable characters. He's just a dude from the street that's trying to make good. He just wants to live a life that's not in the slums, boosting cars and getting shot at, but the only skills that can make him any money are boosting cars and getting shot at. His friends all think he's putting on airs by wanting to get out of the hood, and his only relative is his aunt, who ALSO gets on his case about wanting to move out of the hood, and who really just wants the house to herself.



There have been a couple of times where I've helped out the cops in the random events. One is in the countryside, where some cops were shooting it out with some drug runners. I was playing as Trevor, and I just slipped around the building where one of the crooks was hiding, pulled out a knife and stabbed him. Then I grabbed the case of drug money that he dropped and walked away. There was another case on the ground by the crooks' car, but taking that would have meant walking into the cops' line of sight and getting shot at.


I'll say this about GTA V -- the driving controls are MUCH better than they were in GTA IV. Flying is a little trickier. I used to be a lot smoother with helicopters, at least, and now I can't seem to fly them in a straight line for very long before I start weaving around.

[RayvenQ]

Michael is less unsympathetic than Trevor, but when he's an asshole to his own family-- yelling at his wife and daughter, and caring more about his yacht than his son-- you kind of find it hard to completely like him. Rayven hit the nail on the head that he's a retired monster who is trying to put that behind him, but the urges to flex those old muscles are still there, and dragging him back into his old ways.

Well, he kinda has reasons to be a bit of an asshole to his family, since, you know, the majority of them are assholes to him, they complain about his previous life (and how its still affecting him) while at the same time lapping up the luxury that that life provided. His wife's cheating on him (quite often it seems) his son is an absoloute selfish asshole, his daughter really is the only one who'se actually trying to do anything with her life, alright, not in a way her father likes or agrees with, but she's the only one trying.

[Shangri-laschild]

Agreed, Trevor is probably the most unsympathetic character in the group

Yeah, Trevor is broken in the head.

Franklin's by far the most sympathetic of the playable characters.

I would like Franklin more if he didn't have such obnoxious friends that he constantly does things for and helps out and doesn't stand up to.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Yeah, Trevor is broken in the head.



I would like Franklin more if he didn't have such obnoxious friends that he constantly does things for and helps out and doesn't stand up to.

I agree Franklin needs to stand up for himself a little bit more against his friends, especially since he's constantly getting stiffed on getting paid for his favors.


Trevor really just crossed a line for me in the campaign for his unsympathetic behavior. [After they pay off Madrazo again, Trevor goes back to Floyd's apartment, where he meets Debra, and gets into a screaming argument with all three of them. When she pulls a gun on Trevor, and Floyd pulls a knife on both of them, Trevor just says "You people are not very nice!" ...a cut later, Trevor's leaving their apartment, covered in blood. He then takes Wade, goes to the strip club, and takes it over... by murdering the manager.]

Going back to Michael's relationship with his family, I got the impression that it wasn't that they resented having to move (at least, by the time the game starts they didn't resent it too much) due to his past life, it was that he was devolving back to his old ways, and the presence of noted psychopath Trevor re-entering their lives that kicked off their moving out. Trevor might not want to kill anyone in Michael's family-- that weird loyalty of his coming back-- but that doesn't mean he'd be a positive presence.

Part of me is hoping that I'll get to kill that smarmy douche FIB agent.

[mikoyan29]

I started playing but so far I've just done the first couple of missions and instead decided to just jack some cars and ride around town. I did get the blimp though but that wasn't quite as fun as I thought (interesting though). So far I'm liking it.

[KhirasHY]

I do gotta say that the Trevor "switch off" situations are some of the funniest things I've ever seen. My favorites so far:

Changing to him and seeing him squared off vs. two bouncers in front of the Casino. One of them just yells "We told you for the last time, wear pants on the casino floor!"

Next time I switched to him, he was standing next to a hobo in the middle of the desert who was hurriedly getting up to run away from him. "Come on, I just wanted to cuddle up and get warm!"

Finally, I switched back later and he was on the roof of a house, nearly naked with an empty whiskey bottle next to him. He woke up, and simply said "High ground. Good thinkin' T!"

I also laughed my ass off doing the mission to get the McNeils, particularly when he hopped in a car and just started screaming "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH HH!"


As for the torture scene...it should not surprise anyone by that point that Trevor is not a good person. Honestly, I kinda enjoyed that part for what he did after the torture was done. Spoilertext: When he let the guy go and got him to the airport to try and hide afterward, we simply mused "wow, Trevor actually may have a heart!" He's still evil, naturally, but he has like a 1% chance of doing something nice-ish...I guess.

Edit: As I woke up a while ago, I had a weird thought...what would it be like if Trevor encountered the girl from The Ring? I imagine it wouldn't work out quite the way she planned.

My mind is a very weird place to go

[Jay 2K Winger]

More Trevor "switch off" fun:

- Waking up in his underwear, with an empty booze bottle in hand, on an island near Paleto Bay, surrounded by bodies. "Last one standing again.:

- Waking up with an empty bottle... at the top of Mt. Gordo... in a sundress. "Any less rational man would think he was kidnapped by aliens."

I juuust finished the main story. Suffice to say, you have a choice to make after The Big Score.

[Franklin is ordered to kill Trevor by Steve Haines (the arrogant prick bastard FIB agent), and then ordered to kill Michael by Devin Weston (the arrogant prick bastard rich entrepreneur), but Franklin doesn't think he can kill both.

There's a third choice-- the one I took-- wherein Franklin opts instead to save both of them, and then they decide to take the fight to all the people who double-crossed them: the Chinese, Stretch, and Haines. And then they find Weston and ... well, play the game and you'll see.]

[mikoyan29]

The important question...(for me anyway)...
Can you steal a train?

[Ben_Who]

I've been finding this game very, very difficult - but not because the gameplay is particularly hard or anything like that. What I'm finding difficult is advancing the plot because there is just so much stuff to do. I've gone to the shooting range to sharpen my skillz, climbed to the top of Mt. Chiliad and taken the lift down, hunted down stunt jumps all over the map, went four-wheeling, watched a couple of movies, and did a couple of those random mission thingies.

GTA games are almost as well-known for their side missions as their story missions - it's possible to finish GTA: San Andreas with only about 35% of the game completed - but they've never been so...distracting before. In fact, since so many of them are devoted to checkpoints or hunting down fifty of something, I'm likely to actively avoid them until I reach certain stages in the storyline. And it's not like GTA V has a weak storyline. I use the excuse that I'm trying to open up the map some more, but hell, I just like to look at the landscape or try to get my car up the impossible slope or drive off a building to see what happens. Yeah, I'll do one or two missions a day, but let's face it...I'm a tourist.

[Jay 2K Winger]

The important question...(for me anyway)...
Can you steal a train?

Apparently so. Of the two approaches for The Big Score, the "obvious" approach REQUIRES stealing a train to move the haul. (I used the "subtle" approach, which didn't require it.)

[RayvenQ]

There's also one mission that involves stealing a train.

Honestly, I'm sad that post story missions, there aren't more way to make money.

The ways you can make money are
-Money from owned properties, either indirectly (get so much a week) or directly (stuff you have to do), a lot of which are pretty expensive.
- Rob Convinience Stores/Gas Stations, of which there's only a few that you can do and you don't really get a lot of money for it
- Stock Market, which is, outside of being tied into some side story missions, a slow burn, low profit kind of thing
- Robbing people, either on the street or as they walk away from ATM's, again, very little money in it.
- Hijacking Armoured Cars, either early in the morning or as they're driving about, a bit better money than other activities, but not much.
- Random events where someone has ben robbed and you can take down the robber and either keep or give back the money. OR one even where there is a shootout and they drop cash and another where you find cash (but that one only happens once).
- Do weapon smuggling wit Trevor
True, thats half a dozen ways to make money, but thats about it aside from certain side missions, and they never net you a lot of money.

[KhirasHY]

Honestly, I'm sad that post story missions, there aren't more way to make money.

You can save most, if not all of Lester's assassination missions for cash. Before each one, invest ALL your cash in whoever the competitor of the company you're screwing over is. You then watch the stock market closely, as it will peak for a huge amount, then settle to a lower plateau...if you time it right, you can make millions instantly. If you saved them until the end, you can basically buy everything out there without any problems

[RayvenQ]

You can save most, if not all of Lester's assassination missions for cash. Before each one, invest ALL your cash in whoever the competitor of the company you're screwing over is. You then watch the stock market closely, as it will peak for a huge amount, then settle to a lower plateau...if you time it right, you can make millions instantly. If you saved them until the end, you can basically buy everything out there without any problems

Yeah, you can get something like 1.62 billion if you do all the assasinations and invest right after the story, but aside from having to do the assasination missions, it's way too much "honest" work for me. Plus, you know, it kinda lacks that sense of earning. I mean come on, as Franklin let me boost cars for selling on or spare parts (there is this int he game but it only gives a piddling $150 for each car destroyed) or as Trevor, aside from the weapons smuggling missions, let me jack a trailer and cab and deliver it somewhere to get money, or as Michael, let me rob banks or jewelry stores or something.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I agree that it appears there won't be many ways to net a big score like The Big Score, post-story, especially since one of the properties available to purchase is the golf course-- which is a whopping $150 MILLION. Waaaay more than you net with any of the scores you pull off in the story.

The biggest score you can really get outside of the main story missions comes from completing the Epsilon side-missions with Michael.

[Each step of the whole quest-line gets more expensive, as Michael is required to give money to Epsilon as part of it. Plus, one step requires Michael to wear his Epsilon robes (which cost $25K) for ten days consecutively. (Which means you can't switch him out to Franklin or Trevor, since Michael will change his clothes.)

Fortunately, I found a way to speed up that 10 day period. Go to Michael's bed as if to save your game, but don't actually save it. This will advance time by 6 hours. It's much faster to do this than wait for the game to naturally progress to that point.

The second-to-last Epsilon mission requires Michael to walk through the desert for 5 miles in his Epsilon robes. That can take a while, but it's not something you can bullshit.]

The last Epsilon mission [has Michael meet Cris Formage, the head of the Epsilon Program, who tasks Michael to escort the "apocalypse funds" to a helicopter, so they can be taken off-shore. You have three ways to approach the mission. You can do as you're told, watch the money-- which includes your last donation of $50K-- fly off, and get a broken antique tractor as your reward. You can bail with the money in the car you're given, and have to outrun Epsilon Security. Or you can drive to the drop-off point, then kill everyone (which is harder than it sounds), before driving off with over $2M.

Three guesses as to which I did, and the first two don't count.]