toblix

GTA V

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That's just made me think of something. What will happen when you die?

I guess you will switch to one of the other characters, and the 'dead' characters won't be available to you for half an hour whilst he heals up in hospital.

How will retaking failed mission work if you just switch to another character and time continues moving forward. :/

I imagine the game will be a lot more linear than that. Are you sure you can switch between them all whenever you want? (I admit to not bothered to read all that much about GTAv5.)

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So... is it just me, or does the fact that the word "five" is emblazoned across the roman numeral for five in the logo bother anybody else? I feel like I'm not usually this pedantic but I can't get past it. Grand Theft Auto Five... Five.

You just ruined one dollar bills for me.

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You just ruined one dollar bills for me.

In this instance, one dollar bills are worth one to the power of one dollars. It's a satisfactory arrangement.

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I read a bit of the GameInformer article this morning and there's a lot of head shake-worthy things being said by Hauser and co. First off, the idea that an older gangster who's getting pulled back in to a life of crime (necessitated by debt) is a "new, interesting idea" to paraphrase, is ridiculous. Hauser should really start watching some of the relavent media he's been purposely ignoring, like, I dunno... Heat? to get some perspective on how original a story he's writing. The main characters really don't interest me. They feel very much like cookie cutter models designed to narratively support the type of city exploring/destroying gameplay gta is known for. Nothing more. Which will be fine for most, but I don't think this story is going to add much that is new.

And in terms of gender stuff: as disappointed as I am that there aren't female protagonists, this image bothers me a lot more:

GTA-V-sunglasses-ftn.jpg

Seductress and Dominatrix stereotypes playing perfectly off each other into an image of pure pornographic fantasy for a male audience. Yay! Not!

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Have Rockstar and the Houser brothers ever shown any real ability in writing female characters? I know that all the ones you meet in GTA IV were shrews or floozies.

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Rockstar have made some pretty 1-dimensional or haphazzardly written characters up til now, and it's fair to assume this'll be the same "I'm a good guy at heart, oops all serial killer" template.

But I think it's hilarious grasping at straws that you call a police-woman a dominatrix stereotype perfect pornographic fantasy. Learn when to dial it back a notch here, buddy, I think that's a you-problem.

The fact that prostitutes are still a part of this series, even though they're the go-to butt of the GTA joke, now THERE'S something you can complain about.

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I don't think it's much of a stretch to say an image that's essentially the setup to many an actual porn is kinda pornographic.

The prostitutes have always been a shock value thing that mostly angers parents and fox news. It's fucked up, but it all comes down to the fact that it's a game written by guys for guys and that's just disappointing to see. (if not surprising).

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I honestly have more of a problem with the police officer being a stern butch Latina named Vasquez. Maybe someone will ask her if she's ever been mistaken for a man.

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Grand Theft Auto's been doing the scantily clad lady thing for so long they can release a 3 pack of their games with just the women on the cover:

twopack.jpg

Normally I get pretty angry about this stuff, but I have a hard time working up anger at Rockstar because the pictures are always so pretty and because they're so obviously pandering to the male gaze. Like, the difference between this:

actual_1352056603.jpg

and this:

hitman-nuns.jpg

Is that the Grand Theft Auto series is basically all about "we indulge the absolute worst in you: senseless over the top violence, brazen unconcealed pandering to your libido, wanton celebration and glorification of crime." Whereas the Hitman game tries to pretend that these stripper nuns have an actual reason for dressing up as stripper nuns and if you suggest that the whole "47 kills the Saints" stuff is torture porn the developers would object strenuously. If you accuse Grand Theft Auto of being basically the most awful video game in the world, they'd probably say "pretty much." Grand Theft Auto is what Postal would be if Postal were more fun, more mature about its immaturity, and simply better made. The discussion in the latest (?) Idle Thumbs episode about how Rockstar nails things like the lighting or how it feels to be in California are just dead on. The craftsmanship on the GTA games is beyond compare, and that applies even to the objectification of women - as someone born and raised in California I can say that the picture of the woman taking a picture of herself with her Rockstar parody of an iPhone is our state in a nutshell as much as anything is.

Obviously Grand Theft Auto doesn't get a pass for any of the stuff it does, and in the current video game climate Rockstar would probably be better off just making great games that don't just happen to feature scantily clad women as an important part of setting the scene, but I'm much, much happier with the art in this thread than I am with Cortana turning into a naked purple stripper or 47 fighting stripper nuns or Borderlands 2 making sure all its women show off cleavage or [insert your favorite video game here that isn't at its heart a pastiche of American culture in a way that basically necessitates oversexualized depictions of women].

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I know I'm going to sound like I'm flogging a dead horse, but video games are still stuck trying to capture the best of Hollywood (and failing miserably, I should add). GTA is no exception.

As for the level of maturity in GTA games; it's pathetic. It tries to hide under the banner of "satire", but childish jokes always win out. Why name the Internet cafes in GTAIV "Tw@t"? What's that satirising, exactly? The overt sexualisation of Internet cafes? It's just a rude word Because They Can.

To argue there's a deeper meaning behind crap like that is ridiculous. It's schoolboy humour written by immature men.

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Have Rockstar and the Houser brothers ever shown any real ability in writing female characters? I know that all the ones you meet in GTA IV were shrews or floozies.

As much as I have a problem with GTA's lame writing, what you said isn't true at all.

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The issue with the police woman image is that the perp is posing for the camera. It makes zero sense that she'd be doing that while being arrested... Except to try and turn the image into a male pornographic fantasy.

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Surerly it's the satire of modern life through the media gaze. i don't condone real-world relation to your points, but i love GTA for hilighting them so caustically and dry.

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The reason the perp is posing for the camera is because she knows she's in an advertisement for Grand Theft Auto Fvive. It's the same reason all the other women are posing for the camera in these pictures, and it's why that one I posted of the woman on the beach is funny - she's not posing for us, she's posing for the camera, which is an ironic reversal of expectations because it's the first time it has ever made sense for a woman to pose in one of these things. Her eyes are finally not locked on us but on the camera.

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There was a conversation a couple pages back that stuff like the Speedophile jet-ski and the Faggio moped (STILL in the game, in 2013!) are really stupid and clash with everything. I think everyone was pretty much in agreement about it.

EDIT- Oh woops, I wasn't really paying attention to Tyler's post.

I just thought this picture of Yvonne Strahovsky was a goofy postcard thing, like a billboard or a DVD boxart. It's not a photo someone took, and it's not really supposed to make sense.

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Tyler, you have blinders on if you think these depictions are any better than the other examples you mentioned. Hiding behind satire and making 0 new or interesting statements while doing so and repeatedly pandering to a mostly male audience is a lame move on Rockstar's part. While the Hausers are better than anyone else at making sandboxes feel real and well-crafted, I don't think they're any different than IO (and you're so incredibly wrong about Borderlands 2 - a game that has probably more positive female characters than men) in the way they approach women in their games.

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themthemthem, I don't think having "positive female characters" makes it okay to objectify women in the way that Borderlands 2 does (and the way that most video games do) and I don't understand why you think the distinction I drew between IO and Rockstar doesn't hold. It seems pretty obvious to me that the Rockstar promotional images are crafted in order explicitly to pander to the male gaze whereas IO, 343 Studios, and so on pretend to have reasons for having sexy stripper women popping up all over their games.

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My point is: just because Rockstar is saying "Hehe, hey guys, this hot lady is merely a cultural artifact. So, let's look at her boobs but in a smug self-aware way" does not mean the end result (pandering to the male gaze) is any different than what IO or 343 are doing by putting objectified depictions of women in their games. IO and 343 are merely being really uncreative and immaturely serious about it. But after 5 games all doing the same thing and to lesser and lesser effect, I kinda think Rockstar is getting to be pretty uncreative and immaturely serious themselves.

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Like I said above, I don't think Grand Theft Auto gets a pass for anything it does, and perhaps there are ways to satirize America, marketing, and all the related stuff without using hot women to do it, but I don't think it's fair to say that a slightly more nuanced take on this stuff is exactly as bad as Cortana or Stripper Nun Assassins. Grand Theft Auto does for most of American culture (including violence) what Hotline Miami does for violence in gaming - it takes some first tentative steps towards criticizing it, but it does so almost entirely by taking the cheap way out and doubling down on the stuff it's ostensibly criticizing. This doesn't make it good or righteous or amazing but surely it's better to have some nuance in there than to just straight up say "yeah, some of the enemies in this game are stripper nuns because... fuck, we don't know" or "Cortana got a boob job because we could." If you think 5 games of this is too much and that Rockstar has outstayed its welcome I guess that's fine, but as far as I can tell the satire has only gotten better each time as it has grown to encompass more than criminality as its themes.

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