The Grand Perspective

So far this year my favorite game has definitely been Grand Theft Auto V, so I figured I might as well make a blog post about it. For reference, Grand Theft Auto V is a game about stealing things, you play as three very different characters who all want the same thing; fat stacks. The three characters are: Franklin, a young guy from the ghetto who desperately wants to make enough money to get out of the ghetto, Michael, a bored and nostalgic middle aged guy who is in the witness protection program because he robbed banks when he was younger, and Trevor, Michael's psychotic best friend who is also a meth lord in the desert. The most interesting thing about Grand Theft Auto V is how you actually start to think like the characters while you're playing them. For example, if I'm playing as Franklin and someone bumps into me I'll flip them the bird and move on, if someone bumps into me as Trevor I'll either blow their car up or murder them as they sit in it. This is all accomplished by carefully showing the player the inner workings of each character's mind through their actions during cut scenes, some of the best I've ever seen in a video game. While the game is careful about exposing the characters, it doesn't much bother with character development. At all. By the end of the game (depending on the ending you choose) Franklin is still a thug at heart, Michael is still an angry old man, and Trevor is still crazy. Some people think that the reason that there is virtually no development of the main characters is that each one is supposed to represent one of the Freudian concepts of id, ego, and superego. Trevor is the id of the bunch, Michael is the ego, and Franklin is the superego. These concepts help the player connect to the character even easier; when you want to be crazy, you play Trevor, nice, Michael, and obsessively nice, Franklin. In literature I notice a lot of egos, and a lot of superegos, but not a lot of ids. Most forms of literature shun ids, like American Psycho, or Clockwork Orange. Grand Theft Auto V is somewhat unique in that you sympathize greatly with the id, Trevor's had a rough life, and that makes me like him even more.