Grand Theft Auto V‘s Los Santos is based on Los Angeles, so graffiti is a big source of the colour in its concrete jungle. And while it’s easy to think of graffiti as simple window dressing, these things often come from a very real place.
AbsolutePab put together a video that fuses GTA V graffiti footage, music, and snippets of a documentary on graffiti — why people, especially young people, create it, and the bleaker alternatives it helps them escape from — to powerful effect.
I’ll admit, I hadn’t put much thought into GTA V‘s graffiti before now, but in this video it’s hard not to look at each wall and craft a little story in your head. What kind of real-life person painted that piece? What kind of in-game character? What sort of life do they lead? Did they do it to claim something as “theirs”? Was it about making a statement to somebody or showing off? Did they have something in them they couldn’t not let out? Or were they merely in it for the craft, the soul underlying the city’s grime?
One thing’s for sure, GTA V‘s graffiti is head-and-shoulders above the frankly embarrassing efforts of most other games.
GTA isn’t perfect by any means, but in this respect it actually offers food for thought. And it’s a line of thought that’s definitely worth taking back into the real world. I love it when games can help us think more, consider our surroundings and each other, even if it’s with something as simple as what’s on the walls. Nothing’s ever simple. Not really.
Comments
2 responses to “Grand Theft Auto V Shows Other Games How Graffiti Is Done”
The game has such attention to detail that every time i take things slow to soak it all in I ultimately end up seeing something else new.
It is nice to know that the game may not need certain things but somebody took the time to create them all and put them in anyway, even though 99% of people who play it may never see it. Just brilliant and they deserve every one of those awards.
It’s a lesson to other developers (I’m looking at you as well movie tie-in games.)
It’s nice. Second Son did some great stencil Graffiti stuff too. I think though for the ’embarrassing graffiti’ the author has shoved Graffiti vandalism and Graffiti art’ into the one category, and they’re two different things entirely.
As someone who has yet to even see GTAV in person as I’m waiting to get it on PC, does the game have a vignette filter in it or is the one in the video above purely from post? Makes it look really nice anyway, if it’s not in the game surely someone (or I will eventually) make a mod to add the effect :P.