You know, after RDR2, I legit cant imagine that the writers will be able to resist making their two leads as much of virtual signaling stand in for the writers as much as Arthur.
Previous games at least had a certain sense of self awareness that our leads were awful people, some trying not be but failing at it, but still awful people. Rockstar worked better when they embraced it and thus didnt bother to use them as mouthpieces for the writers' personal beliefs, I mean, pff, why would they have their words come out out of disturbed criminals?
But I think in recent years there was certain a level of "unironic admiration" and romantization for the criminal, but not just any criminal, the "We have standards" criminal.
What are those? Well, its the "Our villain protagonists are evil but not THAT evil, audiences, dont worry, their politics will not offend you in the slightest and will, in fact, match current social sensibilities, independently if it makes sense or not" syndrome. You know the whole, "villain is evil but draws the line at rape" or something like that? People enjoy that level of complexity and I will be fair, I am one of those...however I am smart enough to recognize that these are just characters at the end of the day and, really, if anyone of them were real, they would be as evil as evil could be, because saying that "you dont hate the gays" while gunning down entire blocks worth of people doesnt exactly make you a good person.
There are many examples in fiction I can give, for example, Assassin's Creed Valhalla having the most PC depiction of Vikings, who, lets be honest, were a bunch of raiding brutes who murdered, plundered, raped and killed whoever was in their way but in the game they are "honor bound" and very much accepting of minorities and le gays... but lets keep this focused on Rockstar and how RDR2 really enjoyed making what is pretty much a gang of rapist thieving criminals a bunch of diverse misfits who are just "fighting back" against a world thats even worse than themselves, thus making them not so bad in comparison or something. I honestly applaud the game for being a masterpiece in the act of slow boiling of the frogs because it took a while for the negative concensus for this game to start to appear, or at least become mainstream enough of a talking point. Dont get me wrong, the game is still constantly jerked off as the greatest thing since sliced bread and it will likely remain that way for a while but only somewhat recently we are finally proper conversations started about how the whole "noble criminal" thing is kind of absolute hypocritical bullshit the moment you begin to think about it for more than two minutes. But like it or not, the game was a hit and Rockstar may have become rather emboldened by it, no doubt feeling like we will swallow whatever they throw, which, yeah, I hate to admit it but they arent exactly off, given the pre-sales numbers of GTA 6.
But all of this to say is the absolute concern and certainty that our two leads will absolutely follow a similar formula, perhaps not to a T, given it is GTA and not RDR, but they will admit it enough so they will follow similar beats. Basically reaffirm our protagonists may be criminal heisters who no doubt have murdered their fair share of innocent men, women and likely even children, but they will be portrayed as having morals and standards that all conveniently fit modern sensibilities so they arent "so evil" when it comes to modern social issues. If RDR2 couldnt resist constantly clowning on any group that its writers didnt like, what makes you think they wont do the same with a far more satirical series like GTA? All under the guise, of course, of "satire" and "humor" among other things.
Its scary to think that, ultimately, the wild west time period forced them to be limited somewhat to what they could tell and satirize but now that they are back in the present? All bets are off.
Doesnt matter how evil characters, protagonist or villain, nowadays are, they will never be allowed to be "politically incorrect" because that might make someone "uncomfortable" (that someone being from Blackrock and/or Vanguard, which means no sweet checks from them but we are not suppose to mention that part out load) and Rockstar just will never demonstrate the same level of "not giving a shit" they once did.
This Rockstar would be satirized and mocked constantly by Old School Rockstar, unironically having a mission where you blow up an expy of their gaming studio just for shits and giggles.
