One Last Ride On The Road To GTA VI 📅 91 Days to launch
Rules Only Work If Everyone Respects Them
The barmaid reminds Trevor; “Trevor, you’re still barred”. Trevor’s response isn’t to apologise. He simply carries on as though the rule is negotiable. Then he knocks out one of the fighters and declares; “He’s won. Bar him.”
It’s absurd, but there’s a serious idea underneath the comedy. Rules only have power when people accept them. A rule that one person can simply ignore isn’t really a rule anymore. It’s a suggestion.
“Rules are made for people, and people are not made for rules.” Often attributed to Oscar Wilde
The barmaid is actually the perfect counterbalance to Trevor. She knows exactly what he is. She’s not frightened into pretending he’s normal. She simply establishes a boundary; “Any more bodies turn up in my bar, I swear, I will not serve you.”
Trevor accepts it. That’s important because despite all his chaos, Trevor does recognise boundaries when they’re actually enforced.
She doesn’t try to overpower him. She doesn’t lecture him. She tells him what the consequence will be and Trevor effectively says, fair enough.
There’s a strange mutual respect there and there’s another little joke worth highlighting. Trevor has been barred from the pub. Yet when he walks in, the first thing he does is become the person responsible for deciding who else gets barred. That’s Trevor’s worldview in one exchange; “If I can’t follow your rules, I’ll just make my own.”
That connects beautifully with the previous scenes we’ve analysed. Trevor has been building Trevor Phillips Industries, taking over the Lost’s territory, deciding who gets to operate in his area… and now he’s effectively running the local pub’s justice system.
He’s constantly trying to turn every environment he enters into his environment. Some people enter a room and adapt to the rules. Trevor enters a room and starts changing them. That’s probably the simplest description of Trevor’s character we’ve come across so far.
With Grand Theft Auto VI on the horizon, I thought it was the perfect time to revisit one of the greatest games ever made. Over the days leading up to the launch of GTA VI, I’m returning to Los Santos for one last ride through the narrative.
In this new collection I’m analysing the story in the comments to tell you what I think is going on. Disagree with what I say? Get in there! My challenge is to get the whole game covered by GTAVI launch.
Link to full GTA playlist here:
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One thought on “When Rules Don’t Apply to Everyone _ GTA Analysis Beyond The Mission”
In a mad, mad world do rules matter if the people making and enforcing them don’t follow them themselves?