When youre introduced to Trevor Phillips, youre hardly left uncertain as to whether hes a pleasant man.
Outside, bench-ladys biker boyfriend meekly voices protestations.
So Trevor smashes a bottle in his face and casually stamps him to death.
Trevor is not an easy man to root for.
In fact, he is, to use narrative parlance, an evil, remorseless bastard.
A complete and total one.
Trevor has no such qualms.
And you do it.
Note the use of the word you in those descriptions.
YOU do these things.
Lets face it, Rockstar knew exactly the sort of reaction the scene would elicit.
Dan Houser is no idiot.
Whether hes deeply cynical or not is another matter entirely.
Sex used to be the contentious issue, as did fruity language, violence, or gruesome combinations therein.
Could this same insight into the characters psyche have been provided by less visceral means?
Would it have had the same clarity and power?
Assuming By The Book was included to imbue Trevor with genuine malice, it partially succeeds.
You genuinely start worry about his discovery of the truth about Brad.
Compared to you, he says, Im the sanest person in the world.
But Trevors still the clown.
LikeGTA, Bret Easton Ellis also used brutality to say exactly what he thought of the American Dream.
The game spits out the bitter taste of the sequence long before its left the mouths of many players.
Thats never a good reason to do anything.
There people are idiots.
Thats not a good sign.
And boundaries should be pushed, taboos broken,The Daily Mailannoyed.
Put simply, they have to do it better than this.
