Whose Story is This Anyway?

Grand Theft Auto V offers a unique twisting of video game narratives with its new character switching mechanic. While the idea of switching from character to character on the fly is hardly a new idea--tactical World War II pseudo-shooter Hidden & Dangerous comes to mind--GTA V's concept offers an alteration to the concept that may be aped and explored in future games.

For the uninitiated, GTA V follows three protagonists--Michael, Trevor, and Franklin--as they paint the great fake state of San Andreas all the morbid shades of red that a vicious psychopath can fantasize about. At almost any given time, players can knock over a convenience store in Trevor's boots, press a button, and drive a (stolen) taxi as Michael, or go golfing with Franklin. The world is your blood-soaked oyster in which the player is arguably in three places at once. While playing as one character, the other two don't go into cold storage in a base location--they live their own lives. As the camera descends on a newly selected Trevor, the player discovers the unhinged self-made man shirtless and vomiting into a fountain. Switching to Franklin might show a less visceral scene of the rising young criminal Franklin washing his car in the driveway. 

GTA V's mechanic isn't mere suit-changing, however. While Hidden & Dangerous and GTA V couldn't differ more, H&D exemplifies the closest example to what we've seen of GTA V's quick head-switching. The same novel simplicity of pressing a button and seeing a different body with a different gun and different skill sets is present in a game that predates Rockstar North's latest release by over thirteen years. The basic AI can control the non-player-controlled characters to some degree while the player can select his own unit to play soldier with. They all work in tandem to complete their Nazi-blasting objectives.

But unlike GTA V, each character lacks a defining narrative. While each one might have a rich, elegant back story (unlikely) written up by the developer, they are inherently separate from the narrative of the game or the gameplay itself. Michael, Trevor, and Franklin's narratives never let up until the player takes the reins, and even then the player's agency in each character's story extends only so far. In between missions, players are left to their own devices--steal cars, evade police, sex up strippers--but when they get to the mission side of things, they only have so many choices to make. The choices increase during the game's exhilarating heist missions, such as who to hire on your crew or what approach to take, but then there is a struggle between whose tale the game is telling.

In Hidden & Dangerous, the player was not the commandos simultaneously but their commander. GTA V, however, wants us to believe that the player is an unholy trinity of sociopaths, three-in-one. I can't help but wonder if Rockstar wanted to revise the experience of GTA IV and its Episodes from Liberty City into a singular new game, and also grant players the ability to choose who to play as and when. In truth, GTA IV's collective protagonists never team up except for Niko and Johnny, but translating that dynamic into V would only serve to problematize the narrative. Players might find it harrowing to choose between playing as Niko present from a smuggled diamond deal or to play as Luis who interferes with said deal with the sharp report of an AK-47. But GTA V doesn't share that problem. The characters are allied.

From its beginning, I found myself wondering whose story is told in GTA V. The game continues to tell me that it's all three of their stories, but my brain keeps arguing otherwise. I find myself relating to Michael insofar as he is a white male with a keen interest in movies. But could this be an answer in itself? Could my relation to Michael be what makes the game his story? Could it be Trevor's story for another person? In a sandbox game like this where the characters come pre-developed, it's hard to say it's the "player's story," but in a series dominated by lone wolves, it's a shock to the system to have three rabid dogs with their own personalities. But GTA V is, after all, a game of freedom and choices. Choose your gun, choose your wheels, choose your avatar of destruction.