(SPOILERS) GTA V - Trevor and Floyd problematic scene?

[Deleted member 23046]

Hey, I'd have appreciated this more than your passive aggressive first reply.

You make a fair point in what a player can do actively and what they observe without control. But doesn't that also expand the other violent actions committed by the characters during cut scenes that the player has no control over? Like another user already stated, by starting up a game to play as abhorrent criminal types, you're basically signing up to do/witness some fucked up shit and making the distinction that rape is worse than murder seems odd and a bit silly to me. If people have personal limits on the type of mature content they experience, that's perfectly understandable, just don't make up an arbitrary line in where one violent activity, sexual assault, is worse than another, murder (its not).

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Hey you've started with the one-lined irony ! ;)

What you say about adult content is true, but I don't think it's the point here. More how Rockstar's writers do their job in a specific moment - not if it's right or not to depict something. The line between professionalism and cruelty for exemple, is often stated by R* protagonists themselves.

 

[Cordy]

I hated playing Trevor and they just, no matter how many times I played him, could get me to like his character. Franklin and Michael felt like real people albeit with some action movie characteristics but Trevor was trash man.

 

[upinsmoke]

Yeah he's a rapist, I mean without ever inexplicably saying so. Some people out there actually think he's a good charcter, what's worse is they try to make him funny, and the stuff he does, funny..

They got it way wrong with that character

 

[Donepalace]

Definitely not gonna disagree their. Obviously i feel social standards have improved since 2012-13 so if they released it in this day and age it would not be a thing and i am hoping GTA6 shys away from that element of character portrayel

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yes because running over millions of people and shooting up the streets is also a barrel of laughs in real life

it's a game a silly offensive game

 

[eso76]

I mean, Trevor is portrayed as a complete psycho right from the start. He does a lot of awful things, that's not even his lowest.
I'm not easily offended but I thought R* really did try too hard with him, I found him disgusting. I mean, you're supposed to, but I was trying to kill him all the time.

 

[FlintSpace]

I might be inviting a ban here (don't), because this scene wouldn't be a problem if this was a movie or GTA TV show. Rockstar always have been telling mature tale involving guns, drugs and misogyny.

I mean wasn't there a female characters in GTA3 who constantly whips a chained guy ?

I am not defending it, just saying it is the story/character they wanna portray. If games are as important as movies than this shouldn't be that big of a deal.

 

[SolidSnakex]

Awful, tedious character. Feels like it was written by literal 9 year olds.

"He's supposed to be this way" - people who think that makes it good, somehow?

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It's not meant to necessarily make it good, it's just explaining why is he the way he is. In GTA the protagonists are often given various reasons to justify why they end up doing what they do. Michael's a criminal that's been clean for years because he's in witness protection, but gets pulled back into it because of Franklin. Franklin's a criminal trying to make a living through doing it. Trevor is just a scumbag. There's no higher moral ground for his character. Like through the story Franklin and Michael develop a father/son-type bond with one another. But Trevor's just an awful person who gets a kick out of doing crimes. In a sense he's kind of the embodiment of all the nastiness in GTA. I think he exists within a story that has 3 protagonists specifically because Rockstar knows they could never make a game with him as the sole protagonists because he'd quickly wear on most people as he has no redeeming qualities. But he works as an additional character alongside two that are sorta grounded.

 

[Yossarian]

Yeah, the fact you can't pay for prostitution in RDR2 shows how much they've improved in regards to these things.

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You couldn't in RDR either.

 

[Deleted member 23046]

I might be inviting a ban here (don't), because this scene wouldn't be a problem if this was a movie or GTA TV show. Rockstar always have been telling mature tale involving guns, drugs and misogyny.

I mean wasn't there a female characters in GTA3 who constantly whips a chained guy ?

I am not defending it, just saying it is the story/character they wanna portray. If games are as important as movies than this shouldn't be that big of a deal.

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it doesn't solve the problem to put a critic of writers choices on a supposed dominant morality (when GTA5 is equal to Harry Potter in terms of popularity) or a misplaced choice of entertainment.

I like the movie director Johnnie To, but his second continental movie smells concessions made to the censorship, so I can't defend it entirely because whatever the reasons, I find a part of the result embarassing.

The same for R* games. For me GTA4, RDR1 and LA NOIRE handle violence and morality with a clear point of view. GTA5 tries to retrieve the parody tone of Vice City mixed with a form a crudeness found in TV series, but I find the core story unbalanced and unfinished.

 

[EarthPainting]

I think the fact that the game (and some previous GTA games) plays it laughs undercuts the whole "it's to show how monsterous he is" angle. There's a long history of making light of sexual assault on men in media though, and Rockstar is all about imitating what they see in movies and on TV. I didn't expect better from them.

 

[Fart Master]

You couldn't in RDR either.

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I forgot

 

[TSM]

I think the fact that the game (and some previous GTA games) plays it laughs undercuts the whole "it's to show how monsterous he is" angle. There's a long history of making light of sexual assault on men in media though, and Rockstar is all about imitating what they see in movies and on TV. I didn't expect better from them.

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Everything is played for laughs in GTA games. Even the torture scenes in GTA V were played for laughs. Not sure why anyone would expect anything else at this point.

 

[Staticneuron]

Trevor is likely meant to represent the kind of manic sociopathy of most players playing a gta game. Crazy, utterly self centered and capricious.

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This. You are not supposed to be laughing at what trevor does or his behavior. He is a mirror. I find him interesting mainly because of how people react to him, or the idea they feel he represent.

The same for R* games. For me GTA4, RDR1 and LA NOIRE handle violence and morality with a clear point of view. GTA5 tries to retrieve the parody tone of Vice City mixed with a form a crudeness found in TV series, but I find the core story unbalanced and unfinished.

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I disagree greatly, all GTA's have their moral code defined by the current character you are playing. And since they are criminals, they may differ from the opther protags either by a little or by alot.

and to repost my earlier commentary on series.

Not all types of satire are meant to be funny. GTA series is pretty heavy with satire but includes multiple types of satire instead of just one. I think they are very successful in what they set out to achieve due to framing and context. While alot is there to make fun of in a light-hearted way there is some exaggerations that are meant to be an indirect criticism of our society and as a whole, people playing these games that are of a mature mindset should be able to tell what they try to be funny with, what they do not address directly, and the more Juvenalian style which is NOT funny nor is it INTENDED to be funny.

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[Deleted member 23046]

I disagree greatly, all GTA's have their moral code defined by the current character you are playing. And since they are criminals, they may differ from the opther protags either by a little or by alot.

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It's not handled like it is in GTA4, LA NOIRE or RDR1, where vengeance and violence or professional and moral dilemmas are structuring the story. I have found the treatment of this very superficial in GTA5. But because chapters are separated by hours of free-roaming fun and varied side-misssions where here the writing can be great, it won't be that noticeable during a first run.

 

[Deleted member 10726]

I hated playing Trevor and they just, no matter how many times I played him, could get me to like his character. Franklin and Michael felt like real people albeit with some action movie characteristics but Trevor was trash man.

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Micheal is legit just another shade of Trevor. He just masks it differently, but especially in the ending where Trevor is killed, Micheal really starts showing how close he is to being just as deranged as Trevor.

Franklin is alright, his problem is mostly wasted potential. He's a black dude that gets put on the backburner once the two white dude protags take stage, as their really badly written drama shit completely drowns out Franklin's presence in the story to be anything more than the guy who's just... there.

Franklin essentially becomes Vaan from FF12, story wise, despite the fact that he's the first character you can play as after the North Yankton prologue, and it's a damn shame since he's still the most interesting of the 3 characters.

 

[Kinthey]

Yeah, the fact you can't pay for prostitution in RDR2 shows how much they've improved in regards to these things.

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You couldn't do that either in RDR1. They're overall going for a different tone in those games

 

[Remeran]

Yes, Trevor is a bad person. Like Michael and Franklin.

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Human stew.....that's my limit.

Seriously though, this scene doesn't age well. I think there were plenty of other examples of Trevor being a force of nature. (see human stew)

 

[Remeran]

And yet apparently everyone was fine with this scene since you never hear about it.

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This one really got me. Him being introduced by doing that to a main character from another GTA was pretty haunting. I never got the scene from the OP though.

 

[Deleted member 49611]

pretty sure this scene was in a trailer



yup, it was this one:



that's meant to show off what kind of character he is. i know they are trying to be funny but that's the way they've written his character. he is meant to be a psycho killer/rapist/abuser etc. not saying that makes it OK.

 

[firehawk12]

I think the problem is that they try to equate Trevor's socio/psychopathy with the socio-economic factors that drive Franklin into crime or even the trite "I have a family" motives behind Michael's new life and to me at least it just doesn't work.

If it didn't affect the post game, I would have definitely chose one specific ending over the other.

 

[boontobias]

I think the problem is that they try to equate Trevor's socio/psychopathy with the socio-economic factors that drive Franklin into crime or even the trite "I have a family" motives behind Michael's new life and to me at least it just doesn't work.

If it didn't affect the post game, I would have definitely chose one specific ending over the other.

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I felt the takeaway of the story was that in spite of all the excuses the main characters use like you listed, at their cores they do things because they want to and are terrible human beings. Trevor's overt awfulness is what they have inside them all. Moreso with Michael than Franklin of course... but Franklin was underdeveloped in every other way too

 

[Potterson]

It fits the character so it's not problematic IMO. Trevor is awful and this scene is awful.

 

[Linus815]

This one really got me. Him being introduced by doing that to a main character from another GTA was pretty haunting. I never got the scene from the OP though.

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One of my favorite cutscenes in the game. It's ridiculously cynical and tragic, and it completely subverts the expectation one would have after playing Lost and Damned. But that's the beauty of it. It immediately sets the tone for Trevor and how deranged and fucked up he is. The game doesn't "trick" the player into making him likable at first and only then revealing his darker side.... it's right there from the start. Which is why I find people being shocked at his actions later on a bit surprising.

 

[Deleted member 55311]

He goes through the game murdering people. Yes. These characters are very bad people. Its not that I'm downplaying sexual assault but murder is pretty freaking final. You don't come back from that. Trevor isn't portrayed as a good guy so I don't think the scene being in the game is a problem.

People who think Trevor is a good guy are a problem though... All three characters are irredeemable people.

 

[Deleted member 57990]

Dan Houser is a multi-millionaire because he thinks the funniest joke in the world is something going into or coming out of a butthole.

 

[-PXG-]

All three characters are terrible, abusive, selfish individuals. That's sort of the point in a game where you're a criminal. Bad people do bad things. Trevor is a raging psychopath who's high virtually every second. What do you expect from a person like that?

Hell, I think it's good thing Rockstar pushed that envelope in depicting just how awful these people are. Why sugar coat it? They obviously did a good job, because folks are talking about it on a forum nearly SEVEN years after the fact. If they hadn't, this thread wouldn't exist.

 

[ANDS]

Yeah he's a rapist, I mean without ever inexplicably saying so. Some people out there actually think he's a good charcter, what's worse is they try to make him funny, and the stuff he does, funny..

They got it way wrong with that character

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He's not a "good" character (none of them are, even loveable Franklin) but he's a good character in my opinion.

And this has always been GTA's schtick. Red Dead has some of that nonsense, but none of the games even comes close to touching GTA in the over the board insanity that is GTA (and that's good, nice to have GTA for the madness and RDR for the quiet madness).

Why sugar coat it?

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One of the gameplay trailers literally has a line from RS saying: "These are not good people you will be playing as." I remember the first Read Dead had a message like "You can be as honorable as you wan't", however this one was like "No, these are the bad guys."

 

[bill crystals]

It's not meant to necessarily make it good, it's just explaining why is he the way he is. In GTA the protagonists are often given various reasons to justify why they end up doing what they do. Michael's a criminal that's been clean for years because he's in witness protection, but gets pulled back into it because of Franklin. Franklin's a criminal trying to make a living through doing it. Trevor is just a scumbag. There's no higher moral ground for his character. Like through the story Franklin and Michael develop a father/son-type bond with one another. But Trevor's just an awful person who gets a kick out of doing crimes. In a sense he's kind of the embodiment of all the nastiness in GTA. I think he exists within a story that has 3 protagonists specifically because Rockstar knows they could never make a game with him as the sole protagonists because he'd quickly wear on most people as he has no redeeming qualities. But he works as an additional character alongside two that are sorta grounded.

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"We wrote our story and world such that it makes SENSE that our characters are all terrible and embarrassing. We made it terrible...on purpose!"

 

[Deleted member 21411]

I never interpreted that way but I can certainly see it. Trevor seemed like a cartoon chaotic ball of insanity and I took it as making fun of the audience that just goes insane in gta games. He is a monster of a human being, in fact I think the biggest failure of gta 5 is how often they punched down at the victims of Trevor rather then at Trevor himself. He doesn't work for me in the same way Michael does but gta writing is pretty..... 1 dimensional.

 

[32X4LYF]

You people realize this is a game right. A game based on a series that has always been over the top and offensive. It satires the most horrible bits of people and societies. Throughout history there have been books, tv, movies, theatre etc that have had characters that are despicable. Why should videogames be held to any other standard?

Rockstar created a character that is meant to be the embodiment of ugly. Just a reprehensible character. I think they succeeded if only for the fact that there are quite a few scenes in the game that make Trevor appear "human", almost relatable. I always liked that. Not every moment or character in media is supposed to be "likeable" or even comfortable to experience. And there are people here saying that Rockstar needs to change. If you are reading this Rockstar people, don't. Do your thing. Create the characters that you want to create. Don't be held back by anything other than your creativity.

Signed, someone who just wants creators to create.

 

[SolidSnakex]

"We wrote our story and world such that it makes SENSE that our characters are all terrible and embarrassing. We made it terrible...on purpose!"

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It's a series about horrible people doing horrible things. Some are just worse than others.

 

[Deleted member 41520]

That is absolutely 100% my takeaway from that scene and several others in that game, and it's why I don't understand why people think Trevor is an awesome character that they love. The fact that all of it is played for laughs also makes me think less of GTA V for it.

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It's not that Trevor is "awesome" or "loved" - it's that he's an ingenious piece of character design. Here is a character who is ACTUALLY as depraved as the fucked up actions that players take on a minute by minute basis in a game like GTA.

He is a diegetic, in-world extension of the players' chaotic and arguably problematic nature.

Trevor is phenomenal on an academic level, not a social or content level.

 

[eXistor]

It's not that Trevor is "awesome" or "loved" - it's that he's an ingenious piece of character design. Here is a character who is ACTUALLY as depraved as the fucked up actions that players take on a minute by minute basis in a game like GTA.

He is a diegetic, in-world extension of the players' chaotic and arguably problematic nature.

Trevor is phenomenal on an academic level, not a social or content level.

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I was gonna say something on why I love Trevor, but this is pretty much what I wanted to say only with better words.

 

[chrominance]

It's not that Trevor is "awesome" or "loved" - it's that he's an ingenious piece of character design. Here is a character who is ACTUALLY as depraved as the fucked up actions that players take on a minute by minute basis in a game like GTA.

He is a diegetic, in-world extension of the players' chaotic and arguably problematic nature.

Trevor is phenomenal on an academic level, not a social or content level.

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People keep saying this, but I don't recall ever wanting to rape anyone in a video game. GTA has never allowed you, the player, to rape people, even when Hot Coffee was a thing. At most, you can roleplay it by inviting a prostitute into your car and then murdering her, I suppose. I'm going to guess the vast majority of people who play GTA games never actually do this, and aren't interested in it.

And let's say this is 100% true and accepted as Trevor's raison d'etre. What's the commentary here? The game I played basically used Trevor as a way to depict assholish, depraved behavior, often for laughs. If the commentary intended here is "and Trevor is YOU," the game never does anything with this. It's just a statement that hangs in the air. At best it seems to just be a fuck you to people complaining about Niko and ludonarrative dissonance in GTA IV.

Plus, Rockstar MAKES THE GAME. They design the ruleset that governs your ability to be a psychopath. It's like designing a virtual society without rules, then looking at how people act in that society and saying "look at how lawless these people are." Well, no shit.

 

[Ferrio]

A horrible horrible character but a great character for a GTA game. Acknowledging the character is good at being an absolutely piece of shit isn't the same as liking, endorsing or supporting anything he does.

 

[Monster Zero]

Trevor is evil. Evil people do evil things including sexual violence.

 

[Turbo Tu-Tone]

That name, this quote.

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Holy shit.

 

[Deleted member 41520]

People keep saying this, but I don't recall ever wanting to rape anyone in a video game. GTA has never allowed you, the player, to rape people, even when Hot Coffee was a thing. At most, you can roleplay it by inviting a prostitute into your car and then murdering her, I suppose. I'm going to guess the vast majority of people who play GTA games never actually do this, and aren't interested in it.

And let's say this is 100% true and accepted as Trevor's raison d'etre. What's the commentary here? The game I played basically used Trevor as a way to depict assholish, depraved behavior, often for laughs. If the commentary intended here is "and Trevor is YOU," the game never does anything with this. It's just a statement that hangs in the air. At best it seems to just be a fuck you to people complaining about Niko and ludonarrative dissonance in GTA IV.

Plus, Rockstar MAKES THE GAME. They design the ruleset that governs your ability to be a psychopath. It's like designing a virtual society without rules, then looking at how people act in that society and saying "look at how lawless these people are." Well, no shit.

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I'd definitely agree that in the end, they fail to imbue Trevor with any higher meaning, context or development. It's true of almost everything in GTA V I reckon, and indeed most of Rockstar's games. The execution is tremendous and a lot of the writing is great, but at a high level things don't often progress.

However, even the rape thing... Players totally use prostitutes then kill them in GTA. They kill people wantonly and teabag them. They toy with their ragdolls.

The point is that Trevor is a true sociopath - someone who also sees the world as a toy, just like the player. Spend 10 minutes in GTA Online and you'll experience exactly how fucked up other players can be - and that's to HUMAN players, not just NPCs.

On a conceptual level, that's fantastic. And I think it justifies the majority of his behaviour. It's very, very fucking dark.

But again yeah I'd agree they could have done a LOT more with it and really made something special.

 

[BrassDragon]

The problem is not Trevor but the poor handling of his victim, who is just a cartoonishly simpering loser with no agency whatsoever. If they wanted to make a point with the abuse angle, better characterisation of Floyd and his response could have delivered on it. As it stands currently, there really is no way to interpret this scene as a juvenile, edgy joke... defending it on its artistic merits is such a stretch. No one is saying you can't like this amazing game if this one element is poorly conceived and conveyed.

Looking at RDR2, I'm pretty sure Rockstar's writers can do better in 2020.

 

[Box]

Lmao who the fuck is that late ass title change for? haha

 

[chrominance]

I'd definitely agree that in the end, they fail to imbue Trevor with any higher meaning, context or development. It's true of almost everything in GTA V I reckon, and indeed most of Rockstar's games. The execution is tremendous and a lot of the writing is great, but at a high level things don't often progress.

However, even the rape thing... Players totally use prostitutes then kill them in GTA. They kill people wantonly and teabag them. They toy with their ragdolls.

The point is that Trevor is a true sociopath - someone who also sees the world as a toy, just like the player. Spend 10 minutes in GTA Online and you'll experience exactly how fucked up other players can be - and that's to HUMAN players, not just NPCs.

On a conceptual level, that's fantastic. And I think it justifies the majority of his behaviour. It's very, very fucking dark.

But again yeah I'd agree they could have done a LOT more with it and really made something special.

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Okay, actually your point about GTA Online sells me a little bit. People ARE genuinely awful in that game.

But yeah, I still would say that if Trevor is intended to be commentary on how people play these games, it's essentially toothless. To steal academic phrasing: it's self-referential, not self-reflexive. It's there just to say "look, this is how someone would actually act if they treated the real world the way you play this game," but it doesn't comment at all about how this reflects on the player or whether the game makes you this way or if this virtual psychopathy is built into our natures, and it certainly doesn't comment on what role Rockstar plays as the developer of the sandbox that lets you do these things.

I had a whole thing typed up about prostitution in GTA but in hindsight it's not super on-topic for this post, but I'll dump it in a spoiler because I do think it's somewhat related:

Spoiler: not actually a spoiler but tangential to the discussion

You can kill pretty much anyone in the game, so you could argue that the ability to kill prostitutes is an emergent property that was an unavoidable side effect. (That said, are there children NPCs in GTA's open worlds? I don't remember any, but my memory is a bit foggy here. If there are not, that represents an obvious choice.) But why include prostitutes at all, or the ability to solicit one? It adds basically nothing to the game. No mission ever requires it, and even if it did it would've been fine to include that option as a one-off (it's not like you ever wield a cutting torch in the game except for that one heist in GTA V where you have to get into a secure facility via an underwater grate). But it's one of the open-world interactions you can do pretty much whenever you want. Why? Was there any reason besides some programmers years ago thinking it would be funny to add it in? And even after all that, it's still not depicting the act of rape unless you, the player, specifically roleplay it as such. Nothing in the game world will support it.

Now, I DO think there is maybe an interesting thread to tug on related to why people will roleplay rape in online games like GTA Online or perpetrate something like it on unwilling players, as we've seen happen in some VR MMO/sandbox titles. But in no way do I think Trevor is an effective commentary on that particular behavior, or was ever intended to be.

 

[firehawk12]

I felt the takeaway of the story was that in spite of all the excuses the main characters use like you listed, at their cores they do things because they want to and are terrible human beings. Trevor's overt awfulness is what they have inside them all. Moreso with Michael than Franklin of course... but Franklin was underdeveloped in every other way too

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I guess in a way it's admirable because these types of stories are always tied to a sense of morality or "code" that the characters act under even though they are still evil.

Instead, you have a character who is a true example of human garbage which is at least a different representation of that character. I think the problem there is that I have no doubt a lot of people think Trevor is awesome and that he's the best character of the three.

(Also I do agree that Franklin really got the short shrift the moment Michael and Trevor were introduced)

 

[Taker34]

I feel like the writing took a nosedive in GTA V. Compared to San Andreas and IV the radio adds, characters, story and the whole satire shtick lost all of its quality. The franchise wasn't always subtle or a good source of humour but it seemed noticeable more clever and self aware.

 

[Pelao]

The game doesn't try to comment on Trevor's actions, it just portrays them. None of the GTA protagonists are good people, some may be more charimastic, others even relatable, but at the end of the day the game never tries to tell you they are heroes you should look up to.

A movie, a book or a game can have a protagonist who's a bad person, does terrible things and in the end wins if it's the story it wants to tell.
When you consume those types of media it's precisely because you want to safely expose yourself to actions that you yourself would probably never commit or think of committing, that kind of experience can help you reflect on your own personal morals and strengthen them, help you mature or just be cathartic.

I really enjoy the GTA series, I appreciate it from a gameplay standpoint, the detail of each entry's setting, the writing and its satire, and because it provides a way to safely explore a world I would never want to be a part of.