Grand Theft Auto V: One of the most depressing video games ever made (ending spoilers)

[JonLP24]

<snip>

But Grand Theft Auto doesn’t have any serious questions to ask. Nor does it really have any serious answers. Every single person in the beautiful world of Grand Theft Auto is an absolute douchebag; the game’s story is a parade of loudmouth goons. All of the villains are the absolute worst human beings you can imagine, and all of the heroes are even worse. Everybody talks too much and nobody has anything to say. Imagine if the Saturday Night Live sketch “the Californians” never ended, and you have most of the spoken drama in Grand Theft Auto V.

<snip>

But Grand Theft Auto V badly wants the drama to matter. It wants to make a point about America and capitalism and the difficulty of balancing professional success with personal happiness and Hollywood and authenticity and “authenticity.” The problem is, the only point Grand Theft Auto has to make is a point so aggressively cynical that — when you finally reach the end of the game’s main story — it is incredibly depressing.

<snip>

This is the endpoint of the game’s narrative: It begins in chaos and ends in chaos. I guess you could argue that this is supposed to be funny, but Grand Theft Auto V doesn’t really feel like a funny game. It feels like an angry game. It hates women and it hates men, it hates rich people doing yoga, and it hates poor people who can’t get their lives together. It hates liberals and it hates conservatives, and it doesn’t take either of them seriously. When I reviewed GTA V after playing about 1/3 of it I compared it to South Park, but the more I played, the more I realized that comparison wasn’t quite accurate. South Park is incredibly cynical also, but it takes its cynicism seriously: It attempts to find some kind of logical path towards something like Truth.

<snip>

What I’m getting at it is that the makers of Grand Theft Auto V seem to have the David Chase/Dan Harmon complex of viewing their own fans with extreme distaste. Bizarrely, this is probably why Grand Theft Auto V is so much better than, say, the upcoming Call of Duty: Whatever. But it’s also why the new game — which is filled with sun-dappled imagery — feels ultimately hermetically sealed and deadening. A lot of people will probably argue that the downer endings of Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto IV are more “depressing” than any of the possible closers for GTA V. But those endings were rooted in some kind of believable emotional through line — in a humanity that the game took seriously. Grand Theft Auto V thinks all humans are inhuman, and it couldn’t really care less.

http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/10/10/grand-theft-auto-v-ending/

I haven't played a second of GTA V but thought this article was great and interesting.