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Thursday 16 September, 2010
I just finished playing GTA San Andreas. Now it is midnight. It is a very interesting game. Playing it with a moral perspective can be very difficult. I noticed right away that every character in the game is corrupt. CJ, the anti-hero of the story, returns to his hood and has to prove himself with small tasks such as doing jobs for Sweet and his family, including kill other gang members in a cemetery. CJ, his family, and his friends are violent people.
And how do you make an anti-hero more likable? Make everyone around him worse than he is. The police who pull him over at the very beginning are corrupt, evil men who treat CJ like dirt. They disrespect him by taunting him, asking "how's your family Carl?" knowing that Carl's mother and brother are dead. Finally, the drop him off in a neighboring gang's territory and CJ has to get out of their fast.
And now it's time to "repair the hood." Missions include killing people and earning respect for it. One mission encourages CJ to spray paint over gang tags. CJ's "hood" is repairing itself. Although, thinking from an outside perspective, it would seem that the area is just becoming increasingly violent and another gang is rising again.
However, one redeeming quality about CJ is that he is against the drug situation in his "hood." It is explained that drugs ruined the once thriving family "hood." However, this game shows that killing someone is a better choice than doing drugs. I entered the crack house as CJ and killed the drug addicts. There are also prostitutes in the house which CJ has the choice of killing. I chose to murder everyone in the building, even though it was not necessary.
This game fully embraces murder as if it is second nature. Anyone in the game can be killed and it still goes on with little or no consequences. The choice to murder a random pedestrian in the street, as well as the encouragement of murder in the missions, is shocking. However, it is addicting and it has me hooked.
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