3. Realising What Rockstar Are Doing
Now I love Rockstar, I think their unwavering ability to put out consistently brilliant, genre-defining titles is pretty unmatched. It's attracted them a whole hell of a lot of mainstream attention for mostly the wrong reasons, and they've continually stuck to their guns, with the overseeing eyes of the Houser Brothers guiding the company's stylistic choices in a way that pleases a mass audience alongside those who stick around to know their John Marston's from their Gay Tony's. That being said, I can't help but think the team, being that they're in the business of poking fun at all and sundry, have maybe created Trevor to be deliberately anathema to even their own strongest apologists. What is GTA if not a never-ending tornado of satire and black comedy, projected out in all directions and refusing to deliver one consistent viewpoint? And what better way to create an everlasting joke for themselves than put in a character that many will have an inevitably disgusting reaction to, only to see what reasons people will grasp onto to justify their inclusion? I'm not saying there's nothing there to grasp onto, the post-credits mission with Trevor's mother being one of the most elaborative on his mindset (especially in relation to Patricia), but would you really need all the eccentricities behind that core story of parent/child abuse to tell that tale? If the other elements on this list exist as manifestations of Trevor's inner torment, then much more could have been done to continue to draw parallels between extravagant player action and relative character reenactment, questioning whether or not the player is just as bad as Trevor when exploring the hyper-mediated gameworld in these evermore horrific ways.