I thought this was an interesting video for anyone who wants to hear Jeff go in depth about his thoughts on the story, since there isn't (and probably won't be) a spoiler cast for GTAV.

I've never heard of Chris Plante before, but some of things he said were remarkably off base. You can see Jeff and Adam sort of looking at each and then moving on after some of the asinine things he said.

Can't wait to watch this.

SESS MONEY

Did Chris Plante really say that Floyds girlfriend was the only strong girl in the game? Wut? She wasn't strong at all. Amanda is stronger.

@krullban: Amanda and Molly

Polygon. Nuff said?

Since I probably won't play GTA, I'll most likely check this out!

I watched the IGN spoiler cast because it had Trevors voice actor Steven Ogg. Steven Ogg is a cool dude.

Nu-uh man, if Amanda and Debby got into a fight Debby would totally win, she would be all 'meaahh' *smashsmash* and Amanda would be all 'blerg yoga'.

But if it was like, Amanda and She-hulk vs Debby and Wonder Woman, then maybe Amanda would win...

Wow Chris Plante is a real chode. He's one of those guys that needs to point out every PC problem he sees in the game. Was does a strong female character have to do with the game? I don't care which one you thought was the strongest. WTF was wrong with the way Franklin was living as a "poor" person? It seemed really accurate to me as somebody who has little money and knows people who have even less. People are people they live out their lives in different ways.

I guess I just don't get what he was trying to say. Honestly I think that's because he didn't really have anything to say he just wanted to be the good guy who makes sure everyone knows all the struggles in the world and points them out until there's nobody left to listen. Then he goes home, farts in a wine glass, sniffs it and pats himself on the back for saving the world.

Chris Plante is exactly the kind of douchebag try-hard liberal that GTA Five makes fun of. I find this hilarious.

i like chris plante but jeez does he not make it easy for himself and his website in this video, theoretically i should be on his side but he seems to just be pointing out literally anything that slightly approaches maybe possibly almost being offensive to prove his point and it just looks weird.

Aww, Chris Plante's got such an adorable little voice. How could you not love that little guy. He's like Jeff Gerstmann's little brother trying to be cool and hang with the big guys.

Chris Plante and Polygon fucking blow, but I love listening to Jeff and Adam talk.

I just wish Adam would tone the lamb chops back...

Hm... I'm a big fan of Chris Plante most of the time. But I think he mistakes aggressiveness for strength in assessing that woman. The game is short on strong female characters, and Floyd's girlfriend is not one of them. Loud words and a controlling demeanor is not the type of strong female character people have been asking for. I will agree that the scene felt weirdly out of place, but not because Trevor is non-violent. Hell, his opening scene was him stomping a man's brains in. But because he has this weird respect for women throughout the game, except that one moment. The entire game, women are the only people that Trevor listens to and doesn't immediately jump to violence, except that scene. I think Jeff's assessment was pretty spot on, a lot of this game felt a lot like it was written by several different people who weren't really collaborating.

I do think his assessment of Franklin was pretty spot on, but he was condescending about it. I think Sessler sort of summed it up better, as Franklin is the player's eyes into this world. The Luke Skywalker. He's the hero, and he is established, but his personal arc is exactly central, until the final moments. But I think the back end of that game is profoundly rushed, and none of the characters or story is given the attention it needed.

The wrong info in this is infuriating. Like when Michaels family comes back they never say "you've changed so much, made so much strides." They basically admit things are just as shitty without him, and as much as they hate him, they miss their father/husband. And they only come back on the promise that all of them actually wanted to change.

And yeah that "only strong female character" comment is dumb since Amanda is a much better/stronger character and plays a bigger role in the game. Also that scene completely fits Trevors character since he just finished dropping off Patricia and is emotionally unstable.

Jeffs hair is fucking awesome.

Yes, actually, that is 'nuff said.

I saw this on my YouTube subscriptions pop up yesterday and watched it. I sort of wish as many others that it was just Jeff and Adam. I've liked past things Chris has done hell, I'm on his Steam friends list inexplicably somehow but just man, I couldn't disagree more with pretty much every reasoning he had for things that he pointed out. As others have mentioned Deborah wasn't a strong female character hell, it was heavily implied that she was a controlling manipulative bitch who slept around behind Floyd's back to get ahead in her profession.

That whole scene was Trevor trying to get Floyd to finally grow some balls and dump her. When push came to shove Floyd chose Deborah who already drastically escalated the situation by pulling a gun on Trevor. While still disturbing that he killed them Trevor was the one who was pushed into a corner there.

Wook at da widdle Chwis Pwante.

I really wanted to see them talk about how horrible the story is not that i expected them to to be honest given the hype involving the game/franchise.

Watching the guy put far too much thought into the whole "why isn't franklin affected by the weed" thing was just quite sad

Interesting. Once again I see someone bring up strong points detracting from a major video game release who isn't part of the Giant Bomb community's pre-approved commentary social circle and get torn down for it. In fact, unlike some of the comments in this thread I often felt a little uncomfortable for Jeff as Adam and Chris were clearly throwing their college educations around and Jeff often had this look on his face of, "yea you watched that movie and read that book but I was at CES before I could buy cigarettes for my delinquent friends!"

Of course, that's what made Jeff a great anchor for the discussion as all of those high-falutin' ideas getting tossed around by Chris and Adam could get grounded by someone saying, "Yea guys, but Grand Theft Auto."

I thought all three were great in this video and hope that they have a part two focusing in further on the gameplay and mechanics of the game like they did with The Last of Us.

On another note, after watching this over the weekend I stumbled onto the Casual Friday clips on Rev3's yooutube page and now I'm curious - are those a subscriber feature, or are they archived somewhere?

Lastly, just so people don't think I'm going to try to make my mark on Giant Bomb by being That Guy That Defends the Guy You Don't Like, Chris Plante has a really dumb beard he needs to clean up. As a fellow beardo, the only acceptable excuse for a mustache sloppily dangling over and around your lips like that is if your entire face is a beard with two little eyes on top. Otherwise, get a shape up son.

Okay Jimmy.

@nodima: Its for this reason that Sessler turns me off sometimes. Have you seen the rev3 review for GTA 5? HO-LY Shit is it the most pretentious fuckin thing i've ever witnessed in relation to a video game. My god

The casual friday videos are free for all viewers you just need to search for it on their channel

This is great i love the GTA V

See, I enjoy it because I feel like video game coverage was trapped in an emotionless cocoon for a long time between the departure of Dave Z and Reverend Dave from IGN's Playstation page and my discovering Giant Bomb; it's probably part of the reason I'm quick to defend someone who's willing to have original opinions like Plante or McShea on these forums, also. I don't find Sessler owning his college education and pre-gaming interests pretentious at all; he's a literary guy and he likes to draw comparisons the way academics do. That's fine and fucking unique in this industry especially.

That said, I didn't watch the video review because I've always found them pointless and a waste of a site's time. I'd rather read a review myself than listen to someone read their review off a teleprompter while vaguely contextual highlights run in the background. Discovering Giant Bomb / Quick Looks last summer was a fucking revelation.

I love it when Jeff pops up in other places.

Heh, I thought it was funny when this Chris dude starts complaining about how they're misrepresenting the effects of pot. "Pot doesn't really make you see clowns, it must be pot laced with PCP or something, but then why didn't it effect Franklin?" ...I've never heard of him, so this isn't a particularly great first impression. If you'd told me that's an "issue" somebody would get hung up on I probably wouldn't believe you.

I agree with what you're saying ... I'm just ashamed I've never managed to end a post quite as well as you have today.

As someone who smokes quite a lot of marijuana, Plante made a pretty good point about the weed thing, actually.

I half-way expected it because of all the characters Franklin's the only one whose access to and appreciation for weed is made pretty obvious (man, if only I could get ahold of one of those infinite blunts...), so I won't say that I felt strongly about it since we're talking about video games here. But it's not dumb to look at that and go, "wait a minute, why does it make sense for the poor black guy to be the one who's able to handle his shit?"

Tolerance isn't some magical thing, or something that you level up like an RPG stat. Everyone has their limits but there's a reason Denzel Washington doesn't hit the PCP in Training Day (other than, you know, plot points). All the weed in the world isn't going to save you from a psychedelic.

It did sting me as slightly racially stereotypical, even if that was likely not the message Rockstar was intending to send with that side sequence nor the main thing I took away from it. Clearly, as Jeff said, they were hoping to expose Michael's fears of a wasted life (keen eyes will notice those aliens are the same as the ones running around the movie studio) and Trevor's unhinged psychosis while Franklin is just a regular guy trying to make some money...but considering Trevor is obviously the heavy drug user of the three, I think it'd have made more sense for Franklin to trip out over the drug and then Trevor had killed the dealer for giving him laced weed, opening a rampage mission against regular people rather than clowns.

But at the end of the day that whole subplot was probably the worst part of the game for me and I'd like to pretend it never happened anyway.

@joshwent said:

Yep. Tells me all I need to know.

When Plante mentioned that the upstate areas look like Red Dead Redemption I instantly thought, what a wasted opportunity to have had an easter egg of this big abandoned farm house that would say "The Marston farm" on it or something. Unless there IS some sort of easter egg associated with RDR? Then again, didn't RDR take place on the East Coast? Well still, as a fan of RDR I think it would have been neat.

As for the discussion itself it was really great. Sessler especially brought up a lot of things that I never thought of - for instance how Michael and Trevor were basically the two adult paths that Franklin could end up on. Plante didn't make me roll my eyes nearly as much as I thought I would but a lot of his points were nitpicky in my opinion. It's understandable that you might not remember who the double crossing drug dealer was that was one of the three targets you take out in the end, but to not remember Lamar's name was a bit weird.

Red Dead took place in a pretty weird map. The far east was clearly supposed to be some sort of DMV area, but most of it was clearly southern states like Texas and Oklahoma, except then there were the northern areas that were like South Dakota and, of course, Mexico.

It's been a while but the western side of the map didn't seem very western, which was weird.

Really? Implying that this dude is so into pot that this weak shit doesn't bother him is racially stereotypical?

Well now it makes sense why Plante doesn't annoy you that much.

Weed. Makes everyone tolerable.

Chris Plante was terrible, from his idea of what America is to "strong female character" was more cringe worthy than Trevor's actions during the game.

I see the Giant Bomb community has turned into every other gaming community now. Nice jobs being total dicks about a person you don't know, very nice indeed.

There's a farmstead in Blaine County that is an exact copy/port of the Marston farm. It's pretty cool.

No graves that I saw, though.

A) It wasn't weak shit. It made people see clowns. Marijuana is a hallucinogen but it doesn't induce a trip-like experience. Trevor and Michael reacted to those joints like they'd just taken a hit of salvia, not a couple tokes off a doobie.

B) Thanks for ignoring the part where I said that was not my main takeaway but I can see how it would bother people considering Franklin is by far the least developed character and considering Trevor's penchant for hard drug use, he would be the most likely character to say, "what the fuck is this?"

Again, I felt the whole side-story was all around horrible and out of place in the game so I'm not too worked up about it, but you're a little blind to the stereotypical American ghetto gangster if you don't see how someone could be bothered by the way they portray how white people react to strong marijuana versus the one black character we see using the drug. Especially when Franklin sits in his aunt's house or apartment, smokes high grade medicinal marijuana and experiences very similar side effects to Michael, ie. paranoia and self-doubt. His reaction to the PCP joint breaks the reality of the game and raises small albeit real concerns.

I'm far from a politically correct person, so I repeat that it did not bother me. But I certainly noticed it, and I wasn't shocked Plante brought it up.

I see where you're coming from. Grass Roots was a weird side quest. The only thing that makes sense to me is that it was originally a Franklin-only side quest that was later opened up to Michael and Trevor once they thought of some funny missions to do with it. After all, Franklin's end of Grass Roots is the only one that has any measure of a pay off (that stoners are too lazy to organize). Out of curiosity, would having it be Franklin-only made Grass Roots better or worse in your opinion?

It would've been pointless and kind of funny (it was still kind of funny). But I honestly didn't enjoy the way it ended, either, considering the numerous examples of marijuana advocates developing proper public demonstrations and not showing up stoned to do so. I wasn't offended by that either, it was just a limp ending. The whole thing felt like, as much as Rockstar would hate to admit it, a way to lure Saints Row fans into the game since Michael's moment comes rather early in the game and pretty quickly has you shouting, much like Vinny and Jeff, "what the hell is this game?"

I get pretty sucked into the worlds of GTA games and I felt like the whole thing was inconsistent with the world we're given the rest of the game, regardless of minor racial stereotypes. I would've been more pleased if the protest had gone on as promised, everyone had shown up stoned as hell, and then Franklin ended up in some kind of shootout with the cops while all the marijuana effects are going on due to a contact high (as in the casual smoking effects at home, not the mission trips). Ground it more in the real world and actually give Franklin something to do akin to the other characters. It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd make more sense.

On another note, Michael's sizzurp trip was possibly my favorite moment in the game proper (no small part thanks to the song and dialogue samples) but that was at least somewhat believable even if my codeine trips in college amounted to little more than lying on a futon and listening to a shuffled playlist of Bob Dylan and Gucci Mane for five hours until I passed out and missed my 9:00AM psych class.

Really didn't mind Chris' input at all. Enjoyed that video.

Pam Greer is the strongest female in the game..

All these comments having successfully put me off listening to this, sounds like it would annoy my arse no end.

Edit: Jesus, haven't seen Sessler in awhile, he appears to have gone full Trevor :)

Same here. Good video!