Was Trevor's first kill too far? (spoilers)

I'm not counting the prologue, I'm talking about Johnny. Killing a major character is fine (I'm a Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad fan) but it should be done in an interesting way. Trevor banging his girl, sucker punching him, then stomping him to death was simply disturbing and kinda works against the story. That scene makes me not like Trevor nor want to play as him very much. Him being nothing more than a psycho bully so far doesn't help anything either. If the two got into an actual fight and Johnny lost/got killed then it wouldn't have left such a sour taste with me.

I was going to make a poll but it looks like they changed things around on here, so would you say it was funny, badass, too far, etc?

I liked it, its exactly who Trevor is.

I don't have a problem with the way he killed him. I just don't like that they treated the character of Johnny. He just comes of as a complete coward which I feel goes against how the character was portrayed in The Lost and Damned. I understand that he's supposed to be a meth addict at this point but it just rubbed me the wrong way.

@geekdown: I agree with this, considering this has to take place after the events in 'The Lost and Damned.'

No.

My second kill, however, went too far as I ran over Johnny's sobbing girlfriend. It was nice that Wade or whoever pointed that out and mentioned burying them together.

Nope, it was perfect, and i loved the Lost and the Damned.

You talk about being fine with character deaths as long as they are meaningful? What could be more meaningful if the first introduction to Trevor we get is him banging a methed out biker girl and then beating her boyfriend to death by curb stomping him? Sets a pretty clear tone to who and what Trevor is. And that is kind of the point Trevor isn't a likeable guy AT ALL but that doesn't mean he isn't a good character because he IS a good character possibly the best of the series.

I didn't like it at all. That did not feel like the same Johnny as the one in Lost and Damned.

That is exactly how Trevor is so yes it was fitting. Sometimes characters and games want to make you uncomfortable. Not evertything is about fun. Trevor is a psychopath and the first scene shows exactly how Trevor is.

Johnny was a badass in the Lost and Damned. He was really weak in 5.

Never played Lost and the Damned. Didn't even realize who the guy was. Don't care either. Kind of hilarious though now that I know.

I didn't even play Lost and Damned and I thought it was kind of unsettling and made me dislike Trevor. That was probably exactly what they were going for.

Too far? Not sure yet. I'm still in the thick of the campaign, but that scene was seriously powerful, as I had just finished L&D for the first time last week over Steam in preparation for GTAV. It made Trevor an "other" for me, not a player character I would like to inhabit. This, in contrast to Niko's puckish rogue (awesome, SR4.)

Since then, all of the characters in GTAV have proven themselves unsympathetic psychopaths, but I'm impressed by the game's ability to get me to root for them. It feels more like a deep exploration of a dark world rather than a fun jaunt on the wrong side of the law.

I thought it was really good. I wouldn't have expected them to have just kill off one of their past playable protagonists like that. I know it was DLC, but I'm sure plenty of people liked that guy. To kind of use him as a stepping stone for the character of Trevor, to show you that even if you were a bit of a main guy in a past GTA, there's a bigger, or at least meaner fish out there was pretty cool.

Nope, I don't think it was too far. It was the perfect way to establish Trevor as completely psychotic, a bad, bad man in a series full of bad people.

If Trevor had beat down some random member of the Lost I don't think the gravity of his actions would have really played. Instead you see Trevor brutally murder a character you have a significant prior attachment to with his bare hands over daring to be upset that Trevor was having sex with the girl he loved. It perfectly and immediately established Trevor as all kinds of fucked up. Immediately you understood just why Michael, Lester and David had been worried about whether Trevor was still alive or not. I think it was also a fantastic way to very quickly change the game's tone in the switch to Trevor and Blaine County.

I enjoy Trevor as a character, in spite of at times being uncomfortable with his behavior. I appreciate his presence as a character where behaving like a lunatic feels completely at home.

I thought it was an extremely clever way to introduce Trevor.

Don't know much of the game you've played but, if you don't like Trevor after that you're not in for a fun time. He doesn't get any more pleasant.

I like that they went out of their way to show him as "bad" on a whole other level. GTA characters have always had some sort of honour or integrity on some level despite being criminals. Trevor is psychotic. He has none of that. It also added gravity for later on when Michael and his FIB guy are talking about how he must be dead, as though they are trying to convince themselves he must be gone.

All of that being said it annoyed me that Johnny went from what he was to meth addict with no explanation or anything.

Trevor is actually the one thing I don't like about GTA V. There's just no way to relate to him. It's the typical pitfall of making the unpredictable psychopath the most predictable character of them all.

Torture sequence was out of place as well. Mostly because they didn't have Trevor kill him in the end. The "redeeming" part of it was so flat and badly written.

Yeah I think it was too far. I'm all for crazy characters but this just made me think that Trevor is a giant dick. And if I can't feel at least some sort of sympathy for a character, whether it's in a game or in movies/tv it seriously harms my enjoyment of the game/movie/show. Actually the very first thing I did after Trevor's first mission was to see if I could switch back to Michael or Franklin. I'm still not that far into the game, so maybe Trevor is going to be a character that I could enjoy playing as, I just thought it was a weak introduction compared to the other two.

The dialogue during the ride afterwards actually changes if you leave her alone. This game has lots of nice touches like that.

He wasn't a meth addict, he was clearly leading a chapter of The Lost in the region, possibly running drugs. His girlfriend is the meth addict, just as she was in Lost & Damned.

I don't necessarily want to say it was "too far" or whatever, it is rockstar we're talking about after all. But it did feel cheap, and to me it immediately said that they want to get away from the more emotional story that IV had and return to the cartoonish tone of the earlier games.

It shows that in the last 5 years Johnny has gone from a complete bad-ass to a week meth head, his arc in the TLATD was already a dark depressing one. Now because he isn't the man he once was he dies in quite honestly a pathetic way. Its fitting for his story if you think about the themes of TLATD.

It also introduces us to how terrifyingly insane Trevor is, it gives you an immediate impression of him.

@taliciadragonsong said:

I don't necessarily agree with that. He isn't as crazy as it seems with that first mission.

@spacepenguin: To me it just felt like a parody, they could have used any random stereotypical meth-heads but instead inserted Johnny and Ashley for effect.

I thought that scene summed his character up perfectly, he's a fucking psychopath; Trevor is without a doubt my favourite GTA protagonist.

Felt bad for Johnny, but I thought it was a well done moment on Rockstar's part. This is how criminals lives end. I appreciate when videogames have the balls to break the convention that an important character needs to die in a grand way, or be a final boss. An older, less wise GTA would have had Trevor wipe out the Lost first, ending by chasing Johnny across the desert on ATVs.

As for how Johnny's portrayed in this game – time passed, he changed.

at first i was like oh shit its johnny we got some trouble on our hands. then it sunk in that johnny is probably just as much of a meth head as his girl is, he looked like a shell of himself no longer the lost mc bad ass. i thought it was perfect to have trevor kill him basically at the drop of a dime because what a more powerful way to introduce us to trevor. once that went down and within 30 minutes you completely wipe the Lost MC off the face of the earth.......just tells you how insane and not to be fucked with trevor actually is.

They state quite specifically that he had become an addict. It also explains why he was such a pushover and could be so easily beaten down by Trevor

@meatball: he says he is during the scene

Man, the number of people who didn't get that scene or get Trevor as a character is hilarious. There are reasons for Trevor doing everything he does granted its the logic of a psychopath but there are still reasons. Like in the torture sequence he let the guy go at the end not because he was trying to do a good deed but he clearly states that he doesn't want to take orders from the Govt' he is saving that guys life out of defiance not compassion.

It felt time to me but i never played TL&TD

That's such an easy and elementary way to setup Trevor as crazy though. That's like comics, TV shows, etc using rape simply as a plot device to amp up the story... it's an easy way for the writer to accomplish their goal. I'm not super deep into the game, but so far Trevor isn't all that great to me. Michael is more interesting/complex and Lamar is funnier IMO.

Hey, cowboy! You mind that I fucked your old lady?! Sorry?! What was that? What? No? No, you don't mind? Oh, because you're a dead man? And the only sentient part of you left is the little bit of brain in the gristle on the end of my boot?!"

Nah, it was great.

Ditto. Maybe I've gone crazy, but that scene (along with the ones that came up after) really sold me on Trevor. His lines and craziness are golden.

The thread is more aimed at people who played the DLC, since of course those who didn't wouldn't care at all about the protagonist getting stomped to death like a roach.

@deathstriker: Fair enough. It's obvious that I didn't have the sort of connection to Johnny that you or the others did, so it only makes sense that we view the events differently. Now that I'm a bit more informed about it, I can't help but shake the feeling that R* did something similar in the past.

It was in San Andreas, wasn't it? I don't believe it was such a one-sided affair, but there was definitely some protagonist killin' going on.

You have to piece together, after the fact, that Trevor was mulling around killing that biker gang anyway. Trevor was mulling over killing the gang, until he recognized that Micheal might still be alive, at that point the ENTIRE biker gang is already dead. Trevor just accelerates his plans when Micheal might be alive.

Johnny was dead before Trevor even walked outside - get it. The gang was going to get wiped out, Johnny walked into the role of bait...and that's it. It wasn't about Johnny being angry at first, it wasn't about any of that little scene before, Johnny dies because that whole gang is in Trevor's way.

There's no such thing as too far in a video game if you ask me.

@geekdown: Johnny is a shell of what he was. It is not properly explained, but Johnny became a meth addict in the 5 years in between GTA4 and GTA5.

I was actually disgusted by the way he was carrying himself. Good thing that he died.

@rjayb89: Wow. Had no idea you could, she posted on wades Life Invader page in my game that she would kill all of them for Johnny.

^this is the right answer. Trevor may be a maniac, but he almost always has a plan (or so it seems) whether they work or not. I honestly thought turning a main character like Johnny into a very minor character was fantastic. He went from being the biker who helped Niko to being some worthless meth addicted biker. The Lost go from the heroes of The Lost and the Damned to a pack of rabid dogs Trevor needs to put down. It's funny, I really liked Johnny as a character, but found myself cheering Trevor on none the less.

The timing of when Trevor decides to kill Johnny and his gang really has nothing to do with my point. I would disagree about them being rabid dogs, we never really saw them doing anything better or worse than in the last game... if anything thing they are cowardly now. They're only enemies because Trevor is attacking/fighting them. It's not a big deal though, I'm still loving this game; it just seemed overly cruel and yet a cliched choice to make Trevor seem like a crazy badass.

@deathstriker: Dissagree. I think it was the perfect way to introduce him and setup his character. Up until that point he's been talked about in hushed tones by people who obviously dont want to attract his presence like he is some boogey man. The first scene with him had to be over the top because you need to pay off all of that build up of everyone being afraid of him.

I thought it was fitting, it's just there to show you the Trevor is not someone who you want to f*** with. I felt bad for Johnny though...

While I was really sad, not only to see Johnny go, but also to see that he pretty much learned nothing from the events of TLAD and still got back together with Ashley, as far as instantly conveying what Trevor is all about, that intro is perfect. Such a weird tone. I was kind of uncomfortable and freaked out, but at the same time laughing my ass off.

Johnny was my favourite GTAIV protagonist, so naturally it was both shocking and a bit depressing to see him go like that... However, like everybody else says, it establishes how much of a complete nut job Trevor is. Johnny succumbing to meth also fitted the character, and him still sticking with Ashley after everything he's had to put up with, this could probably be seen as a suitable punishment...

Still, poor Johnny... that guy's had a pretty fucking terrible streak of bad luck in The Lost & Damned, which itself was also (partly) instigated by your actions as Niko.

I understand why they created a scene that shocking but I really didn't want to play as Trevor after watching it. I was really, really close to turning off the game. I haven't done any Trevor missions after this one and obviously I will continue because the game is amazing - but it left a really bad taste in the mouth.

I really hope Trevor ends up getting killed or in some sort of bad way which is a strange feeling to have about a videogame character I control. I really hate him at the moment.

I wasn't a big fan of Johnny. He was the typical "rawr rawr ok I'm gonna do your mission" character that seemed kinda spineless apart from talking tough. In that respect I thought the main character from Ballad of Gay Tony had a lot more balls and didn't take any shit from anyone. I was surprised that they killed him in such an unceremonious way, which kinda makes me think they must have not liked that character very much or something. In San Andreas they didn't kill off Claude.. although.. I think that was before the events of GTA3..?