What Made GTA 5’s Characters so Bad?

Following up on the likes of CJ from San Andreas and Niko from GTA 4 was never going to be an easy task. Those characters were brilliantly designed and real, complex human beings for the most part. They were obviously bad guys, being GTA characters, but with enough redeemable qualities that most of us could relate to them on some level.

And then GTA 5 dropped, and instead of focusing on one story, Rockstar decided on three main protagonists. Michael, the sociopathic white-collar criminal; Trevor, the junkie psychopath; and Franklin, the classic hoodlum (but certainly the best of the bunch).

Many didn’t like these characters, and I’m one of them. So here’s my opinion on what made them so bad.

They Aren’t Bad in the Traditional Sense

Okay, there’s one thing I need to clarify. These characters are all good when compared to games outside the Rockstar universe. They have rich histories, solid backstories, an interesting dynamic, and overall are well-written characters. They’re only bad for a GTA game, because when GTA 5 launched, we’d been spoiled for over a decade with some of the best characters in all of gaming.

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Just thought I’d share that before you grab your pitchfork and torch and come after me. Now let’s get into it.

The Lack of Redeemable Qualities

I like to think that most of us are fairly good people. Of course, we’re all different shades of grey, but mostly we do try to do the right thing. We protect our families, we stand by our communities, and we generally try to avoid being a nuisance to society, like Niko, like CJ. Sure, they’re criminals, but they were driven to that life more by circumstance than anything else.

Michael, though he tries to protect his family when the need arises, simply seems to be in the life for kicks. He continuously places his own selfish needs above those of his family, which leads to most of the troubles he experiences in the story of GTA 5. Well-written, perhaps, but not relatable on any level. His one and only redeemable quality is being protective of his family, and even that could simply be an ego thing.

Then we’ve got Trevor. Zero redeemable qualities, not even one. Do I even need to go on? He has the emotional regulation of a two-year-old, and how he isn’t dead yet by the time the GTA 5 story rolls around escapes me. He’s so wild that he actually breaks my immersion in GTA 5 quite a bit.

A guy that loud, that hot-headed, not dead or in jail yet? I just can’t swallow it. I do enjoy it when Trevor exacts revenge on rival criminals, I might add, but he does not discern between rivals and innocents, which is a major sticking point for me.

Finally, Franklin, the one saving grace for GTA 5. He’s a good guy, and he actually reminds me a lot of CJ. The only problem is that he feels a bit boring, a bit flat. It’s almost like he’s a bit too passive for me, allowing himself to be pushed around a bit too much by Lamar and even his aunt.

But I do like Franklin. He’s the best of the bunch. I just wish we had more of his story and a bit less of Trevor’s.

The point is, all these characters feel rather simplistic in their motivations. A bit one-dimensional, if you will, and we don’t get to see too many sides to them. But that might actually have more to do with how GTA 5 was setup than with the characters themselves. Allow me to explain.

A Diluted Story

GTA 4 and GTA San Andreas both run for about 25-30 hours if you only focus on the main story. Doing the side missions and activities can easily push that up to almost 60 hours. GTA 5 is the longest, with the main story lasting about 32 hours, but it only goes up to around 48 hours with the side activities.

In other words, we get close to 30 hours JUST being Niko, JUST being CJ. In GTA 5, we get 10 hours for each main character (not exactly, but for argument’s sake, let’s go with that).

This is another problem with the characters in GTA 5. We simply don’t get enough time with them. The story is diluted among three characters, and we just don’t get that time to build a proper bond as we did with the previous entries.

I wanted to learn more about Michael and Franklin, since they were barely relatable, but every time I had to play as Trevor, I just felt disgusted. But then maybe I’m just getting old and soft these days. I’m sure teenage me would’ve loved Trevor’s madness and the chaos he sows everywhere he goes.

Which is another level to this argument. Depending on your life stage when you found GTA 5, you might feel completely different from me about our three leads.

But that’s enough yapping from me for today. I’d love to hear what you think of the main characters of GTA 5 and how they stack up against both your expectations and the previous entries. Do you think my opinion here is valid, or am I simply being too harsh on these guys?

Fresh Hope for GTA 6

This last point is why I’m really excited for GTA 6. We’re basically getting one story here (I hope), instead of three intertwined ones. Jason and Lucia should largely be on the same path, going through the same story, and hence, there’ll be more time for us to bond with them.

So if one of them were to die in the end, that’d hit way harder than having to kill Trevor or Michael.

The cast of supporting characters we’ve seen so far is also way richer already than anything we got in GTA 5, and I can’t wait to finally hit start on Rockstar’s latest title.