I don't think the point was supposed to be about whether torture works or not, but rather that torture is just as barbaric as anything else you can do in a GTA game, "ticking timebomb" scenarios notwithstanding.

I don't think that's firmly established in the scene. Michael still seems to think that the ID'ing of this guy is extremely shaky. The point of the scene seems to be that, whether it worked or not, the torture was, at root, not any different from the other things we see these guys do in the game. It wasn't some noble…

Some people think that because it's brutal, and the player is given an interactive role, that means Rockstar condones torture. What I'm wondering is why brutality and interactivity are assumed to imply a moral acceptance of what's happening in the game. If that's not what you're trying to say, then I apologize. But…

Okay, but the question is, why does brutality == condoning torture in the eyes of people who feel that way? I mean, in the first scene with Trevor, we witness him chuck a bottle right into a guy's head and then stomp him to death, leaving a piece of brain on his shoe. We are shown exactly what these people are. The…

I just feel like the railroad approach is lazy narrative.

But GTA 5 isn't a pure sandbox. You are playing with characters who have built-in personalities and backstories. The game "railroads" players into doing a staggering number of totally immoral things. The fact that a torture scene (which doesn't end in death) would strike people as somehow worse than pulling…

That's exactly it. I totally respect the idea that this may not be a scene that's easy for some players to get through. It's when players jump to the conclusion that, just because the scene was hard for them to get though, somehow Rockstar must be condoning torture, that things kind of go off the rails as far as logic…

Naw. I think this is a case where people want to be all offended by this and think that it "goes too far," and so they completely overlook the context in order to support that intention. The satire is not exactly subtle. Trevor and Michael are bad guys, and the game goes out of its way, throughout its narrative, to…

POSSIBLE SPOILERS! DON'T READ IF YOU'RE SENSITIVE TO THAT STUFF!

Yet, just as often, children who experience these things go on to carry them out themselves later on in life. You at least had a beneficial response to it, in the form of a rejection of your father's behavior. That's a silver lining. But either way, you probably didn't learn much about keeping the area beneath your…

This is great.

Ah! Didn't even catch that. PS3, obviously.

I don't say it to gloat or anything, but rather because I think it would be sort of fun to experience these glitches. It seems like games never glitch out in fun ways for me like they do for others.

Crazy. I honestly didn't run into any glitches like this on my first playthrough (PS4 digital download, because I couldn't wait for the 36o copy to be delivered after a shittily-scheduled, 3-day national holiday). The only thing that happened was my game kind of bugged out during the FIB thing and I had to grenade…

I totally believe that spanking, or whatever, can be done in a proper way. The problem is that it quite often turns into abuse masquerading as parenting. As a society, we have largely decided that being able to parent our children in this way does not trump the rights of children to live free from physical abuse. We…

The key word in that quote is "positively." I'm not telling a person what to, positively, do with their kid. I'm just saying that this chosen method of parenting isn't very useful. I'm negating the method, not suggesting an alternative. Why? Because without knowing the specifics of the situation, it's hard to make a…

I mentioned a handful of potential and confirmed reasons why they would have wanted to release GTA Online separately. Chances are that it's a combination of those, or others that haven't even been mentioned. What's clear to me is that you're opining in bad faith about a game that you won't ever play. Why should your…

I disagree with Petit's viewpoint that GTA 5 is a "misogynist" game, but I totally respect her opinion. I wish it had been explored more fully in her review, which only briefly mentioned it off in the periphery. Anyway, I'm not sure why so many people seem to lack the ability to disagree respectfully these days. They…

Sometimes it does take a smashed game system or destroyed toy for them to get it through their skulls that they aren't in charge.

Of course it's going to be incomplete! Rockstar's vision is to have this be a long term, evolving experience, not just some one-and-done multiplayer mode. I'm sure there are all sorts of reasons why they didn't release GTA Online directly alongside GTA 5. Rockstar has noted that they wanted players to become…