Why do people hate characters because of their personalities?

[Rob72891]

Before anyone use the "everyone's entitled to their opinion" excuse here, I want to know that there's nothing wrong with people hating a certain character in the GTA series. That's fine. However, here's what really irritates me: when someone says that they hate a character because of their personality. A lot of you people are forgetting the fact that these certain characters have those personalities because it's the point of their character. I'll give an example of what I mean. There are some people who hate Tommy because he's an angry psychopath who kills people and doesn't care about anyone, and they ignore the fact that him being a psychopath is the f*cking point of his character. I'm not saying you shouldn't hate the character because that's how their personality is. I'm saying you need to give a legitimate reason as to how them being a psychopath makes them unlikable. Because a psychopathic character can still be likable if they have the charisma and alternate traits to back it up. In other words, I'm saying that people shouldn't judge a character based on their personality alone and more on how their personality is executed. I'll give you an example of me hating a character based on the execution of his/her personality rather than their personality alone.

 

Maria Latore: She's meant to be this funny lady with a drug addiction to add on to the humor, but the real reason I hate her is because she causes a bunch of problems for Toni and Claude (which makes her missions for the former annoying due to her being the source of the problems), not to mention she gets captured so much she isn't even worth rescuing.

 

Sweet: He's supposed to be rough on his brother for running out on the family and wants to protect the hood, which I can understand. However, it also makes him unlikable towards the end, because he shows no gratitude for his brother and still has the nerve to call him selfish AFTER CJ went through all the trouble to keep his sister safe, help out his friends, and bailed his brother out of jail. Not to mention Sweet's hypocritical for criticizing CJ for not putting in work for the hood yet gave up on the hood himself a mission after that when he decided to smoke crack.

 

So you see? I feel that people should stop judging a character based on their personality on his own and judge them more on how their personality is executed instead. Because a lot of the characters are designed to be the way they are. Of course, the characters that have these traits are clearly meant to be hated, but again, I feel that people should give a reason as to how a character's personality makes them unlikable instead of just simply hating them for their personality alone.

[CynicalMexican]

Yeah, it's like certain characters need to exist. It's kind of like you can't have GTA 4 without Dimitri; he's very easily hate able but he makes the story so great.

[SM-W]

22 hours ago, Rob72891 said:

However, here's what really irritates me: when someone says that they hate a character because of their personality. A lot of you people are forgetting the fact that these certain characters have those personalities because it's the point of their character.

Well I guess this thread is specifically addressing people like me, so allow me to present my viewpoint on this:

 

 

Yes, certain characters are designed to be irritating or whatever. There's nothing wrong with that. However, when making an unlikable character, you must be aware that, at a certain point, you cross the "event horizon" where a character becomes so irritating that it becomes detrimental to the experience.  And unfortunately, Rockstar may be one of the worst companies when it comes to this design philosophy.

That's the integral issue I have with GTA5: Every single person is unforgivably annoying. All three main characters are f*cking irritating. All the side characters are irritating. The majority of the story missions only exist to make you do boring sh*t for zero personal gains. How much fun did you have doing that "scouting the port mission" and all the prep work, steal the submarine, pull off the heist, only for Lester to show up at the end, go "lol nope :)" ... and then you're exactly where you were before you did the missions, but now that much more older, tired, and closer to filling up an urn?

In fact, this kind of design is what (for me at least) killed RDR2 from being the "legendary" game it set-out to be (which DID accomplish, for the most part).

Spoiler

Every single character in the Van Der Linde gang is this incredibly fleshed out person with a history, motives, etc. Even as the gang got worse and worse, you *could* see how from Dutch's perspective, things WERE starting to come together.

 

And then there's Micah.

 

By far of the most obvious betrayals-in-waiting in the history of storytelling. He only exists so he can pull off the most arbitrary Judas moment ever, and it's one that anybody who isn't in the game doing what the script says can see coming. Even before the game was out, I knew there was gonna be "the one guy who betrayed the gang in there" ... the difference is that I expected it to come from a "core" member, not from the guy who's been in the gang for like 6 months at the start. And HE'S the one who Dutch somehow trusts in the end? Despite the fact every job he's a part of goes wrong, from all the way back to the failed Blackwater Job? Despite the fact that this man has literally no redeeming qualities???

 

sh*t, it was far more interesting to think Molly was the rat than Micah. Molly was a woman scorned by a meglomaniac. Being a woman and a "non-outlaw" meant she would have most likely walked without any charges for selling them out.

There's no reason at all for the Pinkertons to cut a deal with a deadly, violent criminal Micah. None. "Made a deal with them" TO DO WHAT? Give out where Dutch was hiding? They were already doing a great job of following Dutch just because of how sloppy he had gotten. They didn't need to work out any deal with him! And Micah still got away and terrorized the western territories for the next, what, seven or eight years? So what did it accomplish?

(Stuff like this is the main reason why I hate prequels. The story has to be written to fit the conclusion, rather than the conclusion being written to fit the story.)

 

No, the reality is, were any of the characters in RDR2 given even the tiniest sliver of consciousness, they would all descend on Micah like a pack of frenzied, rabid chimpanzees, shred him like pulled pork, and then drag his entrails across the valleys in different directions while screeching into the crisp, dusk air.

"Well it's easy to say you'd kill them until it's in real life!" True, but even for US soldiers in Vietnam, there were occasions when "someone" would go out in the middle of the night and set off a grenade in the tents of the sleeping lieutenants who treated them like sh*t and sent them into enemy lines without any care for their survival. Usually resulting in said LT. being killed, too. Micah only survives and continues in camp as long as he does by the sheer brute force of the writer's will.

Here's the sad thing: With just the smallest amount of restraint, Micah could have still be an irritating bad guy without being so obvious. How much better would it have been if he was actually a mildly helpful and reliable gang member? Someone who's still irritating, amoral, a bit racist and about as sexy as a dung beetle, but one who's actual, like, you know, a real character? Just like every other VDL Gang member is? A bastard who's also got SOME positives and likeable attributes to him? For example, when he tells Dutch to leave Abigail behind, that's a moment where he's being an awful person, BUT IS ALSO MAKING A SENSIBLE POINT. THAT'S BEING AN IRRITATING ASSHOLE WHILE ALSO MAKING PERFECTLY LOGICAL SENSE. (That's why, even if Dutch's decision there was a betrayal of his principles, you can't fail to understand why he made that decision. That's why that moment is such a good scene.)

 

Or better yet, imagine that NOBODY is the rat! Nobody sells them out!

The awful fact is that, once you start dissecting the story, Micah being a traitor is completely irrelevant and unnecessary to anything that happens. The collapse of the gang was inevitable simply because Dutch was getting sloppy and picking fights with people he shouldn't have, like Cornwall. (And then it would have been exactly like John kept saying happened in RDR1: that Dutch went crazy.)

Micah could have just be "another one of the gang" instead of the guy every player spends their second playthrough avoiding rescuing from jail and constantly antagonizing. And for some, going through the trouble of modding the game just so we can see Micah in the agony the devs didn't let us get to put him through ourselves:

 

When you remove the "rat" aspect from the story ... the whole thing still plays out just about exactly the same way with no difference. It is truly a waste of time.

 

 

So now that I've gotten my ramble out of the way, answer me this: Why should I spend a minute of my god damned life playing linear-as-f*ck missions in-between long drives where purposefully unlikable people bitch in my ear nonstop, when I could do literally anything else? Read a book; learn a skill; plug in the ol' Dreamcast; lay in bed and ponder existence; jerk off; pay a woman to kick me in the balls until I vomit; point my eyes at the sun until the f*ckers melt out of my head. The possibilities are truly endless with the things I could do besides play games like GTA5.

Or hell, I could go on social media and *I* could be the unforgivably-irritating piece of sh*t myself ... AND be the one who gets to enjoy it!!

 

TL;DR If you're gonna make a character who is so irritating they wouldn't survive in the real world, either, A: Balance it out a little, give them a single character trait that isn't just "irritating asshole" and make them not have to go through long tangents explaining in great detail how they're unquestioningly pieces of sh*t .... OR, B: Give us the opportunity to give them a very long, drawn-out and screaming-filled death. :^)

Edited August 5, 2021 by SM-W
(had to fix a bunch of spelling errors because I wrote this late at night)

[E Revere]

I don't really hate characters for their character. I only hate characters if they're badly written, like Trevor. I look at things from a literary point of view.

[billiejoearmstrong8]

I think there just often isn't enough of a distinction made in discussions of "worst" characters as to whether we're talking about worst as in badly written/the game would be better without them or worst as in being a horrible person (which could be excellently written/very enjoyable). I think usually if someone says they "hate" a character like Dimitri or Tenpenny it doesn't mean they think he's a badly written character or they don't enjoy him, but just that he's successfully written as a hateable person. Whereas if they say they hate a character like Tonya it's more likely because she's pointless and annoying in a way that isn't enjoyable.

 

I guess where the line is blurred a lot is when it's a character who is deliberately written to be annoying. It comes down to how well they pulled it off - sometimes they'll successfully write one who is a super annoying person but amusing to see on screen/in interactions with other characters etc and adds enjoyment to the game, but sometimes they'll fail to make them enjoyable in that way and they'll just be annoying in a tiresome or cringe way and you'd prefer they weren't in the game. Same thing with certain nasty/evil characters, some will find they also have some charm or hidden depths or find their evilness entertaining, some will just find them unlikeable and not be entertained. Whether it's "love to hate" or actual hate for the character being in the game comes down to whether you find them to be well written or not. 

[Spartak2811]

On 8/4/2021 at 7:24 PM, Rob72891 said:

 

Maria Latore: She's meant to be this funny lady with a drug addiction to add on to the humor, but the real reason I hate her is because she causes a bunch of problems for Toni and Claude (which makes her missions for the former annoying due to her being the source of the problems), not to mention she gets captured so much she isn't even worth rescuing.

 

 

Oh, look how many troubles she caused! And why did she make all these troubles? Did you never interest? I think you gain pleasure pouring barrels of dirt on this poor victim of domestic abuse and humiliation just because she’s so “annoying” and “troubled”?

If I’ll say that Salvatore poisoned and ruined Maria’s life, what will you answer?