I've got to say, I found the pliers to be the most unpleasant torture implement - you had to rotate it in a certain way, I don't know, but however you were supposed to do it, I couldn't figure it out - I was trying to get that tooth out for minutes, and then, when I finally figured it out, blood started spraying out, he started screaming more, there was this awful grinding sound - I couldn't watch. And that was the first thing I did, and I had to torture him 3 more times, all the while with him talking with a slur because I'd wrecked his mouth. That mission was not fun.
With that said, I saw the game through, I finished it, and in the end, I think I did enjoy it and I did come to enjoy the characters. And I did so more than I have with Rockstar's other games - don't get me wrong, I enjoyed GTA IV and Red Dead: Redemption - great games in a great world, but I didn't care for those characters at all - they're morose, they whine, and they're used by various interests who never let them go until everything goes to shit, and that combination of a character whose life is miserable and consistently, stupidly, makes decisions that pull them deeper into that misery is something that wears at me. I think the exception might be the McRearys in GTA IV, I liked them, and I liked Niko when he was around them, but really, let's not pretend that Rockstar's previous games haven't been set in worlds of scum and scumbags - the only difference is that in GTA V, we have a protagonist who isn't so beaten down and morose about it all that he trudges through it with lead shoes - that doesn't make Bellic or Marsden better people in my eyes, because they keep doing it; to me, it just says they're idiots who hate themselves and don't do anything about it. With GTA V, Michael makes stupid decisions, but at least he puts in the effort to enjoy what he does, and Trevor, insane and depraved as he is, refuses to be beholden to anyone, manages to keep control of his life, and for the most part, manages to enjoy himself - and those make them infinitely more sympathetic in my book.
That's one of the many reasons that I eventually, to my surprise, found myself preferring Trevor to Michael or Franklin - he refuses to be pulled into the ridiculous nonsense that the other two spend the whole game diving into, and when he does find himself in a situation, he resolves it. Moreover, his character was in the end, bizarrely, easier for me to understand than the other two. Ultimately, I see Trevor as someone who continues with his psychotic, manically depraved persona because he's fallen so far into it that it's all he has left, and it lets him make peace with all the stuff he does. Michael's unwillingness to try to repair his family? I don't get that. Franklin's unwillingness to change or abandon the various disfunctional relationships that he has is, while something I can understand, something I also have very little sympathy for. Trevor choosing to be a lunatic rather than having to face the things he does? Surprisingly, I can get that. Maybe that's just my interpretation, I dunno, but it works for me.
Sorry for the enormous post, very much enjoyed the podcast.
