You're very free to offend anyone in the real world. "The world" is bigger than the environment curated by big tech from SV and US-media.

Treat yourself to some GTA V radio shows (you'll find them on youtube), Rockstar plays the cultural meta game better than other company, they do legit art playing with the dominant political stereotypes. Rockstar are not in the market of appealing to cowards, their entire brand identity revolves around the exact opposite.

GTA V came out in 2013. "The world" has changed considerably.

I can only assume you would be surprised by the contents of the aforementioned radio shows (and lots of the scripted conversations in game), because they dealt with this exact topic in 2013 - in depth and par excellence. GTAs audience explicitly wants an over the top explicit, non-politically correct product.

In the last game, a main character (Trevor) was introduced by stomping an npcs brain into the ground before finding rests of it on his shoe. There is nothing pc about GTA, it takes place in a cynic take on reality that doesn’t respect the common sentimental denominator of marketing departments in the real world.

>In the last game, a main character (Trevor) was introduced by stomping an npcs brain into the ground before finding rests of it on his shoe.

I disagree, and I think this section from paul graham (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) captures the dynamic perfectly.

>Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough chance of being true that the question should remain open. But many of the things people get in trouble for saying probably do make it over this second, lower threshold. No one gets in trouble for saying that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad. The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are those they worry might be true.

In the context of GTA, I think themes like drugs, violence, and sex is probably safe, but culture war topics like reproductive rights, race (eg. CRT or affirmative action), LGBT rights, or immigration are not.

> culture war topics like reproductive rights, race (eg. CRT or affirmative action), LGBT rights, or immigration are not.

those are exactly the topics GTA has previously touched on/which I recommended to check out the radio shows for, the anecdote wrt Trevor was probably misleading.

I'm fairly certain the person you're replying to is prognosticating about the potential sanitization of the next game. I don't think the content of the older games really impacts that.

I think the person you are replying to is pointing out that the content of the older games, for the most part, aged very well and is more relevant than ever. And this wasn't a coincidence, because if you were paying attention 20+ years ago, you saw the future we were building. Rockstar's writers were paying attention. I expect the content of gta6 to be more prescient than ever.

Correction: your world changed considerably as existing problems became more visible.

Think people forget Rockstar's culture is British in origin, not American

I think that’s more of a right wing meme than reality. Plenty of TV shows and movies revel in “bad boy” storylines. I think what’s changed is that people expect some actual depth in explaining the motivations of “bad” characters, but I don’t think Rockstar has ever really struggled with that, their last few offerings have had relatively well rounded narratives.

If you actually want to know the answer to your question, go play rdr2.

But suffice it to say, there's a difference between being a rebel and being an asshole. No one likes an anti hero who's insecure and goes around kicking people while they're down, they like conflicted characters who know what it's like to be rejected by society and who stands up for others in the same boat.

It is yet to be seen how the writing will be affected. Let's just see whether or not civilians become a protected class and if prostitution is still a thing. We wont know until the game releases so my recommendation is to not preorder. Worst case, we will always have GTA5.