Why all Grand Theft Auto apologias are bullshit

[prog]

Or anyway, most of them; I roll my eyes every time someone puts forth the argument that you only kill hookers and run over little old ladies if you want to play the game that way.

This statement is literally true, but it carries the false implication that the game offers you alternative interactions with these non-player characters. Lookie, here are your two options for communicating with any of the random people walking around the game world:

• Ignore them

• Beat / maim / kill them

That's it. The controller doesn't have a "talk" button, but it has an array of buttons dedicated to punching, shooting, and breaking into things.

Your character in GTA is Frankenstein's monster. He wants to talk to the little girl with the flower, but he just doesn't have the facility, and ends up drowning her instead, because his action-range is so limited. Sad.

Comments

[mr-choronzon.livejournal.com]

wow good response. It's totally true. Much of the fun I get from GTA is either running the actual missions, or simply playing in the environment by doing ridiculous driving off of buildings etc. The whole violence against people thing gets old real quick, since the one-on-one combat is WAY less sophisticated than an FPS.

Same with flight sims, the actual fun is flying around, even though you can have fun at first by crashing into the Sears Tower. That gets old fast though, and then you get interested in the real game.