How Grand Theft Auto 5 prevents inter-hero murder

Grand Theft Auto 5 features three heroes all living out their own lives, so what's to stop you from finding one of the others and murdering them?

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Grand Theft Auto 5 is trying something new by featuring three lead protagonists, each with their own specialized abilities. But what's to stop you from finding one of your alter-egos and murdering him in cold blood, other than a general sense of right and wrong? According to Rockstar, quite a bit.

Responding to a series of fan questions, Rockstar said that each of the characters are meant to be living out their own lives, so popping into one might put you in the middle of a family scuffle with Michael, or find Franklin flirting. Their locations won't always be plainly obvious, and Rockstar says it's "not always easy" to track them down. If you do find one of your fellow heroes, you can hang out with them, and even smack them around, but you can't kill them.

"They all have remarkable powers of recovery and good health insurance," the blog states. "The game is based on playing all sides of these three characters' interwoven stories rather than having generic, interchangeable leads, so permanently killing a major character in that way wouldn't make sense. If a player is determined enough though, they may well find a way to badly injure one of the characters and switching to that character would just put you in the hospital to continue where you left off."

So basically, it sounds like each of the characters become Wolverine when you're not in direct control of them. Disappointing as it may be to budding psychopaths, that move does maintain Rockstar's ability to tell a story without completely breaking it.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 2, 2013 2:30 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, How Grand Theft Auto 5 prevents inter-hero murder.

    Grand Theft Auto 5 features three heroes all living out their own lives, so what's to stop you from finding one of the others and murdering them?

    • reply
      July 2, 2013 2:47 PM

      With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed.
      Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate,
      or persist in the doomed world you have created.

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        July 3, 2013 4:44 AM

        [deleted]

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          July 3, 2013 5:28 AM

          yup, I saw that message a lot during my play through.

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        July 3, 2013 5:47 AM

        So you could kill anyone, but fucked up the storyline if you did? Awesome.

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          July 3, 2013 7:05 AM

          the way I played was

          1. try to steal everything from everyone I met
          2. if they catch me, kill them
          3. reload save because I just killed a whole town and messed up the story line


          Morrowind was the best.

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          July 3, 2013 7:12 AM

          [deleted]

    • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
      reply
      July 2, 2013 2:49 PM

      Or them looking to murder you.

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      July 2, 2013 2:56 PM

      Wow, that's really interesting.

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      July 2, 2013 3:05 PM



      Here is a DLC idea for them. or playthru round 2 if they wanted.
      the game should record what you did during missions etc.

      then when you have finished the game you open up a new character whos goal is to STOP the success of your previous play thru, all of this gets recorded for playback during the next play thru.

      and so on.

      • reply
        July 3, 2013 5:52 AM

        I like your idea. Find some people to make an indie game out of it!

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        July 8, 2013 10:55 PM

        that really is a good idea. i dunno if the theoretical third playthrough should just be to stop playthrough 2, but instead the player is placed in a position to interact with the previous playthroughs in whatever way they want.

        that's probably what you meant though. it's a great idea

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      July 2, 2013 5:11 PM

      I just find it interesting that they thought to do that. Never would have considered hunting one of my other characters down and messing with them.

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        July 2, 2013 6:56 PM

        Yeah, me neither. And I've been thinking about how I'm gonna play this game a LOT.

      • Ziz legacy 10 years legacy 20 years
        reply
        July 3, 2013 5:55 AM

        Well now I want to put one of the characters in the hospital, or see if it can be done.

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      July 2, 2013 7:04 PM

      [deleted]

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      July 3, 2013 4:53 AM

      the past is obdurate

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      July 3, 2013 5:31 AM

      I really want to know how they're going to handle the story of this, if you're able to switch characters at any time, one would assume you can also NOT switch characters as well?

      Can I do all of character 1's missions allthe way to the end of the game (or near the end?) and then I need to switch back to character 2 and yet he's referring to things I did hours ago? It's kind of interesting and complete.

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        July 3, 2013 5:31 AM

        complex, not complete.

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        July 3, 2013 6:03 AM

        That would be a clever way of re-using art assets in the game for multiple playthoughs.

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          July 3, 2013 6:09 AM

          but it's also completely illogical. If the 3 players are so intertwined and they tell their story the normal Rockstar ways surely one character does something for one of the other characters, or he's impressed or "i heard you recently did that bank gig!" and so on, right?

          Except now, I finish 16 missions as "Michael" or whatever his name is but I've done 0 Wayne missions. So I do my first Wayne mission and he comments "I heard Michael just stole that car, crazy guy!!!" except that was Michaels first mission, 4 hours ago.
          Does that make sense? The dialogue would be tricky as HELL to write if the characters interact but you can play as whoever in whatever order!

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            July 3, 2013 6:15 AM

            Yeah, and not only that, but you know what is going to happen. Kind of takes out the suspense of the gameplay.

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            July 3, 2013 10:02 AM

            I would assume the progression is such that you do their personal missions a handful at a time, and then a heist mission as all three, then more personal missions, heist, etc.

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            July 3, 2013 11:33 PM

            I'm sure you get to a point where one character is waiting on another character before any more progression can take place. You can play "Michael" forever but you can only play three missions as him before you're waiting on another character to find and bring you the laser sharks or whatever so you can do the next one.

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      July 3, 2013 10:23 AM

      As long as they're suspectible to physics and can be made to go flying by hitting them with a train, I'm fine.

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      July 3, 2013 1:17 PM

      ASSIGNMENT: TERMINATED
      SUBJECT: FREEMAN
      REASON: FAILURE TO PRESERVE MISSION-CRITICAL PERSONNEL

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