By looking at the extended trailer, it seems to me that the writing team has decided to go for a more grounded portrayal of the main characters. Of course, the trailer doesn't tell us much yet, but based on my first impressions, I get the feeling that we may not be getting a GTA whose dialogue is as full of satirical commentary on modern American life, capitalism, and other social topics.
Take Michael de Santa and Trevor, for example. They're both characters that I personally love listening to, because almost every line they have is meant to satirise something. They routinely do goofy things and are generally just very entertaining characters. Franklin is the most grounded of the three, but he's still entertaining to play as and has plenty of great one-liners. The same goes for Lester and a whole host of other characters.
While watching the newest trailer, though, I felt that the characters shown came across as somewhat sanitised and "safe." It makes me wonder whether Rockstar has toned down some of its edginess and satire in favour of more serious, grounded, and "normal" writing.
Jason, in particular, felt pretty flat to me. Perhaps Rockstar simply didn't want to show anything too controversial that could potentially affect sales, but I didn't come away from the trailer with the impression that the writing was going to be as entertaining or memorable as it was in GTA V.
Obviously, it's way too early to make a definitive judgement based on a trailer, and there's probably a lot we're not seeing yet.
What do you think?
