Sometimes You Can’t Escape Yourself _ GTA Analysis Beyond The Mission

One Last Ride On The Road To GTA VI 📅 65 Days to launch

Sometimes You Can’t Escape Yourself

Michael is surrounded by everything that was supposed to make his new life better — the mansion, the family, the wealth, the retirement and yet he’s miserable. He’s smoking in the house, watching an old movie, arguing with Amanda, and blaming Trevor for making everything worse but Amanda has a point that Michael doesn’t want to hear; Trevor didn’t create all of Michael’s problems. He exposed them.

The marriage was already broken.
Michael was already unhappy.
Michael was already smoking and drinking.
Michael was already escaping into television and nostalgia.

Trevor simply kicked the door open and brought Michael’s old identity crashing back into the house and then Fabian appears. Which is possibly the worst possible person to introduce the concept of inner peace into this particular household.

The deeper connection

There’s something particularly clever about the old film noir playing on the television. Michael is watching a world from another era — one built around tough guys, smoking, cynicism, beautiful women and men who solve problems through violence. It’s almost a reflection of Michael himself. He belongs emotionally to an older version of masculinity. He doesn’t know what to do with the modern world he’s ended up in. His wife wants emotional communication. His children want attention. Fabian wants mindfulness and Michael wants to sit on the sofa, smoke a cigarette and watch a film.

That’s why Amanda’s accusation that Trevor has made him worse is only partially true. Trevor has certainly made Michael’s life chaotic but Trevor didn’t put the chaos inside Michael. It’s already there. Michael’s whole retirement is essentially an attempt to suppress it and Fabian inadvertently exposes that.

Yoga asks Michael to do the exact thing he has spent the entire game avoiding; stop, breathe and confront what’s going on inside his head. Naturally, Michael wants absolutely nothing to do with it.

Amanda’s role is important too. Amanda isn’t simply nagging him about smoking. She’s expressing something much deeper; “I gave up my old life for you, and now the life you promised me isn’t working”

Michael responds with sarcasm because sarcasm allows him to avoid responsibility. That’s becoming one of Michael’s recurring patterns. When confronted with an uncomfortable truth, make a joke. It’s exactly the same mechanism we saw with Steve Haynes.

The difference is that Amanda knows him well enough to see through it. Fabian doesn’t. Fabian just sees Miguel and then invites him to yoga. Which makes the whole thing even funnier.

There’s also a great piece of irony in the final exchange. Amanda wants Michael away from Fabian. Michael doesn’t want to do yoga. Fabian thinks yoga will bring everyone together and somehow Fabian wins.

That’s GTA V in miniature. Everyone is trying to control everyone else, and nobody has any idea what’s actually going to happen next.

Underneath the comedy, the scene gives us another important piece of Michael’s character. He doesn’t really know how to be happy when there’s nothing to fight. Crime gave him purpose. Family gave him responsibility. Retirement gave him wealth but not meaning. Trevor gives him chaos. Franklin gives him relevance and now Fabian is offering him something completely alien; peace.

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: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHXhzng6I1qAqj_VrRBMjflIcQpOPNv6l

Level me up by – 👍 💬 🔔 🔎 Gramepa – 🙏

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