Summary
Given that the series' main selling point is that players get to bounce around a highly detailed fictional city, committing some of the worst crimes imaginable,Grand Theft Autohardly shies away from the darker aspects of modern society and the crueler tendencies of human nature.
However, while the player is complicit in the virtual acts of rage, depravity, and gorein the mainline missions, they can always use the excuse that they are only following the story. In the case of side missions, there’s no arguing that players are happily participating to be as cruel (or at least as inhumanly callous) as possible.
5Eddie Low (Random Encounter)
Heading Out With Liberty City’s Most Inconspicuous Serial Killer - GTA 4
After springing his theory of animal “self-gratification” on Niko a mere ten seconds after meeting him on a dark street corner, Eddie asks if he can get a ride. After hearing “I can pay,” Niko switches off his"transparently psychopathic serial killer" detectorand helps him throw Eddie’s oozing wet duffle bag in the back seat of his car. After the player drives them to the docks, Eddie declares that he is going to “drop the kids off” and throws the bag into the water. After clearly witnessing a deranged lunatic dump his collection of desecrated heads into the sea, Niko nonchalantly tells him that he’s “kind of a strange guy” and that he “hopes he’s only joking” about the “hunting.”
Nevertheless, Niko agrees to drive Eddie to Westminster, where Eddie says there are “a lot of nice boys.” For one of the series' most relatable protagonists, it’s either incredibly dark of Niko to accept (and abet) Eddie’s behavior or incredibly dense of him. Later, there is a chance to meet Eddie again in a dark alley. After describing his horrific murder of a family, Niko suggests that he “get laid” before Eddie attacks him. Naturally, Niko can fight back. However, if Niko runs instead of fighting, an ominous message will inform the player that “Eddie is still out there… waiting.”
4Margot (Random Encounter)
The body count for anyGTAprotagonist is high, especially since pedestrians throughout the series haven’t exactly been known for their effective survival AI. However, the vibes after this random encounter inGrand Theft Auto 4: The Balad of Gay Tonyhit differently than a typical NPC-over-the-windshield incident. When Luis meets Margot when visiting the Hercules club, she asks him why he hasn’t acknowledged her many messages, calls, emails, or gifts.
After trying to let her marriage proposal down gently, Margot tells him that she has taken a lethal amount of painkillers and sleeping pills and demands to be taken to hospital. Sometime after getting her stomach pumped, Margot finds a way to cross paths with Luis. This time, she threatens him with a suicide note, which says that he pushed her off the rails (a message thatcould only be penned with cartoon physicsin that short amount of time). Luis tries to get her to climb down, but she fumbles and falls, smashing her head on the stairs below, triggering a chase sequence as Luis flees the scene.
3Trevor’s Rampages (Strangers & Freaks)
A Sudden Tonal Whiplash - GTA 5
Going on a homicidal spree is the bread and butter of theGrand Theft Autoseries, but all it takes is a little perspective shift to see how truly dark an event like this can be. In games of the 3D timeline, rampage missions were framed as “kill X gang members,” which put civilians out of the firing range. InGTA 5, which takes place in the HD timeline, Trevor is meant toembody the player’s inner murder hobo, but his general behavior in the story tends to be grounded (at least with one foot) in realism. In this mission, he has no problems destroying an entire community of people (gangsters, rednecks, or even just “hipsters”) either due to a blackout rage or for a high score.
To add some context to the first rampage side mission, Trvevor initiated the execution of 25 bystanders because he was thirsty, and a stranger refused to hand over his beer. While they may have been rude, they didn’t exactly deserve the death penalty for being a member of a gang, trading insults, or defending themselves (perhaps even fleeing) from a well-armed lunatic. At the end of the day,GTA 5is all about giving playersa chance to let off steam, but given the lengths that Rockstar went to present a more nuanced, realistic, breathing world, 25 civilians dead over a beer is a dark tonal shift, to say the least.
2The Wife / Her Lover (Optional Phone Booth Mission)
A Marriage Very Much In The Can - GTA 3
After taking a couple of payphone jobs from a guy called Marty Chonks, Claude is asked to take care of his wife (in the “sleep with the fishes” kind of way) because she has become too much of a financial burden for him. The exact way he requests this happen is by escorting Mrs. Chonks to a dog food factory, where Mr. Chonks plans to kill her and slews her remains into the product. Claude doesn’t exactly protest this cold-blooded approach to resolving the marital dispute (probably because he can’t actually talk) and agrees to the job.
It is only afterward that Marty Chonks discovers that she has been having an affair. Her lover just so happened to be a man he owed money to. Naturally, he, too, is processed by the dog chow machinery and is compensated a total of $6,000 for his part in the human-flavored dog’s breakfast. As possiblythe most evilGrand Theft Autoprotagonist, it should come as no surprise thatGTA 3’s Claude would be going out of his way in his free time to get up to some particularly evil business.
1Various (Strangers & Freaks)
Choosing (Not) To Do The Right Thing - GTA 5
As technology (and budgets) improved over time, developers like Rockstar started experimenting with giving players more than one way to interact with the urban sandbox around them. InGTA 5, players could intervene in random events, for example, stopping a mugging or returning a stolen vehicle. However, Rockstar knows their fans well, and as well as giving playersa chance to be “good citizens,“they also let them do something unambiguously monstrous, so long as they control Trevor before the side event begins.
Whether it be preventing a woman from being kidnapping (snatched), taking home a man too drunk to drive (Drunk Drivers), or stopping a rival mafia family from burying the daughter of a crime boss alive, Trevor has the option to take “the scenic route” and drop them off at the Altruist Cult’s camp for $1,000 per head. While the typical end results of human trafficking on their own are already too dark to contemplate, the Altruists are also heavily implied to be cannibals.
