Antagonists = Fail?

[OriginalGunslinger]

Anybody else think the antagonists were a really bad choice in V? They are clearly not memorable like the ones from previous GTA games. This also goes back to the 3D Era GTA games.

 

Catalina alone from III was a memorable antagonist than the ones who were featured in V.

 

Devin Weston, Steve Haines, Cheng Sr. and Stretch? Are you kidding me?

[Maxxeine]

This is a no-brainer question. The antagonists in GTA V were stereotypes, a parody, if you will. No character, no rhyme or reason, and flat out bland.

[Tacymist]

Yeah I didn't like them much. I'd have preferred it if Madrazo was the main antagonist with a bigger focus on Mexican Cartels over the government sh*t.

[Zackyoung1]

100% the antagonists sucked in GTA 5.

[universetwisters]

Aunt Denise would've made a better antagonist than everyone else. f*ck, I'd rather have had the last mission involve Franklin & the guys raiding his old house, kicking his aunt out, and him ironing shirts in his old house for the rest of forever.

[PoeticWhisper]

I f*cking hated Steve Haines with a passion. So it felt good to murder him. Were they as memorable as the as the past GTA's? No, but they served their purpose and clearly weren't the main focus. We're not playing as heros, we're criminals. It's bigger than just the hatred between select people, that's what makes this game different from the rest of the other gtas.

[poland stronk]

I said this many times but I'd prefer to see Trevor as main antagonist. He is already disliked by some people because of his cruelty, insanity and other nasty deeds. It would be a great ending if we were somehow left with the decision as Franklin who to side with - Michael or Trevor while those two want to kill the each other, not just do the dirty work of some rich idiot or douche agent . It surprised and disappointed me how T. couldn't kill Mike after North Yankton but had no problem eatting corpses of innocent or killing Johnny.

 

This whole Goverment crooks threating protagonists was overused. But maybe Rockstar will fix it by developing seperate stories for Frank and Trevor in future DLCs.

Edited October 5, 2014 by poland stronk

[Nuke.]

To me Trevor is the main antagonist. Doesn't help that he was written as a super villian rather a real person.

[theGTAking101]

I've had a bigger urge to murder a ped who cut me off than any of these "antagonists".

[Lock n' Stock]

The antagonists really suck, I'm afraid to say. They really lack the threat that previous antagonists like Catalina, Sonny, Tenpenny, Dimitri, Bulgarin or even Jerry Martinez had. Dave Norris is just a cowardly and corrupt FIB jackass while Devon Western is a rich prick whose only safe behind Merryweather's protection.

[Hmmm nice bike]

The Chengs and Stretch were really sh*tty antagonists. The very few missions both of them were in were so forgettable that I can't even remember why we were supposed to hate them, and I don't understand how Tao Cheng even gets his own artwork. He only appears twice in missions and once in 'The Third Way,' and then that's it!

 

On the other hand, Steve Haines and Devin Westin were douchebags, but they weren't as bad as Dimitri or Tenpenny, or even Lance Vance. I think the worst thing Devin did was send mercenaries to kill Michael's family, but that was it, and I think a lot of people found Michael's family annoying enough to where they didn't care about them.

[oCrapaCreeper]

Steve and Devin were good enough to make me feel happy after killing them, but I forgot Cheng and Stretch were even in the game until ending C.

[Niobium]

The antagonists really suck, I'm afraid to say. They really lack the threat that previous antagonists like Catalina, Sonny, Tenpenny, Dimitri, Bulgarin or even Jerry Martinez had. Dave Norris is just a cowardly and corrupt FIB jackass while Devon Western is a rich prick whose only safe behind Merryweather's protection.

 

uhhh, do you mean steve haines...?

[Osho]

Absolutely!

Antagonists = Forgettable!!!

GTA V as a GTA game = Fail!!!

[Official General]

Anybody else think the antagonists were a really bad choice in V? They are clearly not memorable like the ones from previous GTA games. This also goes back to the 3D Era GTA games.

 

Catalina alone from III was a memorable antagonist than the ones who were featured in V.

 

Devin Weston, Steve Haines, Cheng Sr. and Stretch? Are you kidding me?

 

Yep, I totally agree.

 

In Vice City, I can remember how I badly wanted to kill that snake Lance for betraying Tommy. And I was so determined to kill that ungrateful Sonny for trying to take away Tommy's hard-earned gold mine of a criminal empire, even after Tommy served hard time for his Crime Family. In SA, I can remember feeling so disappointed and hurt that CJ's close friends Ryder and Smoke betrayed him, so the urge I had to kill them was through the roof. As for Officers Tenpenny and Pulaski, I just could not wait to put those bullying, bastard corrupt cops six feet below. In IV, Dimitri's evil double-crossing antics had me raging with anger every time he phoned Niko to taunt him. Now in GTA V it was a different story......

 

Devin Weston and Steve Haines both had me wondering why I was supposed to really hate them in the first place, and this was right at the end of the story when I had to make an ending choice. I was even thinking to myself, " you mean to tell me that it's these two that are main bad guys ?? This game is can't be serious " . Yeah Weston and Haines were indeed both annoying pr*cks, but that's as far as it went with them for me - I honestly could have not given a f*ck about whether they lived or not. They were both so boring to deal with that I was in fact, hoping they would both just go away and bother someone else, I certainly had no strong desire to kill them. I would have thought that Madrazo would have been the best candidate for being the main antagonist in V, a brutal, bloodthirsty Mexican drug cartel boss, just like the real cartel guys in Mexico who chop off heads for fun. Instead, Madrazo turned out be some powder-puff, weak-ass crime boss who somehow miraculously still managed to be in charge of his own criminal organization after being made to look like a punk by a scrawny trashy hobo called Trevor.

Edited October 5, 2014 by Official General

[Tehguy123]

Dimitri:

 

-Betrays you

-Tries to have you killed

-Burns down Roman's house and cab business

-Kidnaps Roman

-Betrays you again

-Sends a hitman after you during Roman's wedding (which results in the death of Roman)

 

Devin:

 

-Gets you to steal some cars, and then doesn't pay you

-Sends mercenaries after your family

 

Steve:

 

-Forces you to work for him

[Cutter De Blanc]

I was surprised that Dave Norton never became an antagonist. It would have been interesting and different if the main bad guy was actually a pretty okay guy.

 

Devin had potential. He has all this money and power, but you never really feel it. You never feel threatened by him. Even when he laughs in Trevor's face. All that Namaste yogi sh*t just made him seem like a total clownshoe.

 

Don't even get me started on how anticlimactic killing Steve Haines was. I was gonna walk up to the ferris wheel and just start shooting everyone but nope, MISSION FAIL. Bit of a let-down.

[Trevorphilipjfry]

The Chinese gangsters were forgettable, but had so much potential, and Madrazzo, could have been so much better

[TheTechPoTaToCHIP]

While I do a agree Cheng and Stretch were a bit lame, I think Devin and Steve are some of the slimiest motherf*ckers I had to deal with, sure they are stereotyped and totally unlikable. But that makes me want to kill them even more, not to mention how they put me through the deepest sh*t and didn't even have the decency to pay me half the time. Killing them feels like saying "f*ck you" to the government and the corporate assholes who drain us of our money day in and day out. And that's what they represented in the game.

[Jimbatron]

This is one of the areas where I think they could have done better - much as I like V overall. I don't think Cheng, Haines, Stretch, or Weston were bad characters per say, but they needed more build up time - Dimitri being a good example in IV who keeps coming back to haunt Niko throughout the story. Cheng in particular I think had huge potential (he shows a good deal of menace when ordering Michael to be killed in the factory), but his appearances are brief. I think they all needed more incidents like in "Meltdown" where Devin sends the mercenaries to Michael's house to build them up as a proper threat. I think though this may partially have been a function of endings A and B where one of the protagonists effectively becomes the final antagonist.

 

If they expand single player story content (and from some of the remastered screen shots, I think they will), the character I'd like to see become the primary antagonist is Don Percival. Although the email at the end of C suggests he's happy to leave them alone, there could be plenty of reasons why this might change.

[HOW'S ANNIE?]

Whether he's a playable character or not, Trevor should have been the antagonist. While my ideal plot doesn't have the entire "Brad is really dead" twist, this is it:

 

Brad's locked away and doesn't know anything about Michael's betrayal. They bust him out and they do a few heists together. Steve Haines decides to get rid of Michael by getting Brad to testify against him, after informing him about Michael's betrayal. Brad betrays them, Trevor goes to kill Brad and Haines, only to find out right before executing them that Michael betrayed them in North Yankton. Trevor kills Michael's family, Michael goes on a rampage to rid Trevor and TPI from the face of the earth. It ends in a chase between Michael and Trevor, they both crash and Franklin saves the day by putting a bullet in Trevor before Michael's done for.

[PhillBellic]

All of them were forgettable. At the end game (Option C), I was asking myself as to why we had to kill people who were only seen in what, one or two missions?

 

Cheers.

[Lock n' Stock]

 

The antagonists really suck, I'm afraid to say. They really lack the threat that previous antagonists like Catalina, Sonny, Tenpenny, Dimitri, Bulgarin or even Jerry Martinez had. Dave Norris is just a cowardly and corrupt FIB jackass while Devon Western is a rich prick whose only safe behind Merryweather's protection.

 

uhhh, do you mean steve haines...?

 

My point exactly, they're so forgettable that I get their names wrong.

[CarlitoDorito]

How could they be more memorable?

[HoleInTheSky]

That mad woman jogger had more balls than V's antagonists combined.

Edited October 5, 2014 by HoleInTheSky

[Undyne]

They're boring indeed.

[UshaB]

• Madrazo and Cheng could of teamed up to hunt down Trevor
• Trev finds out about Mike's secret, they go to North Yankton, Mike gets kidnapped by Cheng's guys
• Mike is taken to warehouse, hung up on hook, tortured by Madrazo with a baseball bat to find out the whereabouts of Trev and his wife Patricia. Mike losing resilience answers and gives the whereabouts of Trev's location
• Madrazo contacts Wei and fills him with the details, he leaves the warehouse. Wei and Madrazo send their guys to confront Trev (takes an in-game of 3 hrs to do so)
• With Madrazo gone this triggers the mission where Frank triangulates and rescues Mike.
• 3 hrs later, you spawn as Trevor fighting off Madrazo and Cheng's guys as Wei would gain the Blaine County area for armory operations and Madrazo would gain the success of having his wife Patricia returned to him. Though of course they fail.
• Mike tries reasoning with Trev, if he hands over Patricia they have the go ahead of committing, "The Big One".
• Wei Cheng is further angered....RockstarGames somehow expands on that (I don't know, I'm not a story writer)

And so forth.

Plus you got that guy Haines and Devin which were wasted potential characters.

 

• There should of been more Franklin missions to allow a more appropriate reason to kill Stretch. Stretch could of and should of kidnapped Frank's ex-girl Tanisha (plus Lamar), why? as Wei Cheng is also angered for Frank killing his bodyguards so he gets in contact of Stretch and would pay him a good price to lure Frank (a scene between Frank and Tanisha could of been very dramatic) Maybe options where choosing between Tanisha and that annoying asshole Lamar to save (as their being held at gun point by the last gunman) Though Frank drops his weapon and wishes to swap positions if they let Tanisha and Lamar go, however the gunman aims at Frank and finally Lamar does something brave and noble and jumps in the way of the bullet. Causing Frank to be very angry and go ground and pound on the gunman. Lamar dies a noble death and Frank wishes he could of been more nicer to him, though Tanisha doesn't wish to want that situation ever to happen again so Frank lets her go for her safety.

etc etc.

[PhillBellic]

 

• Madrazo and Cheng could of teamed up to hunt down Trevor
• Trev finds out about Mike's secret, they go to North Yankton, Mike gets kidnapped by Cheng's guys
• Mike is taken to warehouse, hung up on hook, tortured by Madrazo with a baseball bat to find out the whereabouts of Trev and his wife Patricia. Mike losing resilience answers and gives the whereabouts of Trev's location
• Madrazo contacts Wei and fills him with the details, he leaves the warehouse. Wei and Madrazo send their guys to confront Trev (takes an in-game of 3 hrs to do so)
• With Madrazo gone this triggers the mission where Frank triangulates and rescues Mike.
• 3 hrs later, you spawn as Trevor fighting off Madrazo and Cheng's guys as Wei would gain the Blaine County area for armory operations and Madrazo would gain the success of having his wife Patricia returned to him. Though of course they fail.
• Mike tries reasoning with Trev, if he hands over Patricia they have the go ahead of committing, "The Big One".
• Wei Cheng is further angered....RockstarGames somehow expands on that (I don't know, I'm not a story writer)

And so forth.

Plus you got that guy Haines and Devin which were wasted potential characters.

 

• There should of been more Franklin missions to allow a more appropriate reason to kill Stretch. Stretch could of and should of kidnapped Frank's ex-girl Tanisha (plus Lamar), why? as Wei Cheng is also angered for Frank killing his bodyguards so he gets in contact of Stretch and would pay him a good price to lure Frank (a scene between Frank and Tanisha could of been very dramatic) Maybe options where choosing between Tanisha and that annoying asshole Lamar to save (as their being held at gun point by the last gunman) Though Frank drops his weapon and wishes to swap positions if they let Tanisha and Lamar go, however the gunman aims at Frank and finally Lamar does something brave and noble and jumps in the way of the bullet. Causing Frank to be very angry and go ground and pound on the gunman. Lamar dies a noble death and Frank wishes he could of been more nicer to him, though Tanisha doesn't wish to want that situation ever to happen again so Frank lets her go for her safety.

etc etc.

 

Marvelous post there. I could not have said it any better. In doing the above it would have fleshed out the story much better and helped give us a reason to want the antagonists dead.

 

Cheers.

[wiizardii]

Absolutely!

Antagonists = Forgettable!!!

GTA V as a GTA game = Fail!!!

Ok we get it Osho. You hate V, you don't need to bland it up onto your posts and say that. I don't see the difference between this post were you express your hate for V, and the other 500 posts about how much you hate V.

[OneManCrimeWave]

Don't you guys get it? We're already playing as both protagonist and antagonist of the story. Michael is the antagonist of Trevor's story because of the Prologue robbery, (leave his supposed best friend for dead, to run off with the millions of dollars that were earned in other robberies), in the same way Trevor is the antagonist to Michael's story during the mission "Bury The Hatchet", (once again, leave your best friend to fend for himself against an onslaught of Triads).