Is Trevor really a psychopath?

[R1ch4rd N1x0n]

The game implies and outright states that he’s a psychopath several times. Despite this, I still try to make him be a somewhat nice guy in my playthrough. This includes, but isn’t limited to, not killing innocent people, not delivering people to the altruist cult in random events, and returning things to people in random events rather than keeping them.

So even if you play nice as Trevor, is he still technically a psychopath, due to things he does off-screen? Or can you make him not be one?

[Thorley23]

Trevor is a pre-defined character not one you really control or make choices for, and his creators have said flat out he's a psychopath. In this kind of a storyline I do not see the player as having the agency to change that, especially since various plot points still make him do various psychopathic things to move the story along.

A better question would be if "The Boss" from "Saint's Row" is a Psychopath or not. The reason being is that you highly customize that character and have a much greater degree of control over what they do. That said those games are still scripted and there are only a few choices you can actually make. I've argued that even if SR III allowed you to play as a fairly nice person, SR2 (which is mentioned in 3 directly) had you perform an unavoidable act of psychopathic evil as part of the basic plot line and it's referenced later..... so "word of god" writing renders any later attempts to insert some sense of moral choice into the game irrelevant.

I have been hoping when they eventually do GTA 6 that they don't script it as heavily as crime games usually are, and take more queues from RPG-type games with morality systems and multiple ways to proceed. It would be interesting to see what Rockstar's writers could do with such concepts given the effort. One fun thing about crime stories is you have good bad guys, bad bad guys, good guys forced to be bad and bad guys forced to be good and all kinds of other permutations. It's what keeps them interesting, and it's why mob and gang dramas interest people so much that they keep making them..... I think gaming has gotten to the point where too much scripting should be a non-seller for a video game, especially of this sort.

Also for the record I'm not the moralist that "Jessica" apparently is, but I will say I've never really been into the whole idea of outright villain protagonists with few if any redeeming qualities. To me Trevor was one of those, and really probably should have been written differently given his role in the storyline. Because of him I had the same basic problem I did with the old "Kane and Lynch" games.... it was impossible for me to cheer for these guys given that everyone (including Franklin) wound up being pretty repugnant by the end. If all the protagonists and all the oppositions fratracided and wiped each other out the world would simply become a better place as a result.

[Jaq]

No, Trevor isn't a psychopath. He's a grade A classic sociopath. Psychopaths are the unemotional ones. Sociopaths are the raging, unstable ones. Many people mistakenly think it's the other way around.

Franklin is more on the spectrum of a psychopath. The most emotion you get out of him is frustration when a scheme doesn't work out, but it's the type of frustration appropriate for when a restaurant gets your delivery order wrong, rather than for killing dozens of people without the expected financial reward. Psychopaths have trouble forming normal relationships, lack life goals, and are prone to taking dumb risks due to not being able to judge the value of their own lives or those of others. Remember that the very first thing Franklin does upon meeting Michael is jump from the hood of a speeding car on to a yacht filled with gunmen. He comes off as a likeable dude, but if you think about it he's really messed up.

Michael is somewhere in between. All three main characters are mentally ill, but it's counterbalanced by all the side characters being terrible people as well. It's all trashy humans, top to bottom. The closest thing to a good person in the entire story is Patricia, who is knowingly married to a mob boss.

So if the protagonists could make choices that decent human beings would make, they'd actually be wildly out of place in this game's world.

[Jon the VGNerd]

He's only psychotic if someone mentions his mother, or his nationality.

[Thorley23]

Originally posted by Jaq:

No, Trevor isn't a psychopath. He's a grade A classic sociopath. Psychopaths are the unemotional ones. Sociopaths are the raging, unstable ones. Many people mistakenly think it's the other way around.

Franklin is more on the spectrum of a psychopath. The most emotion you get out of him is frustration when a scheme doesn't work out, but it's the type of frustration appropriate for when a restaurant gets your delivery order wrong, rather than for killing dozens of people without the expected financial reward. Psychopaths have trouble forming normal relationships, lack life goals, and are prone to taking dumb risks due to not being able to judge the value of their own lives or those of others. Remember that the very first thing Franklin does upon meeting Michael is jump from the hood of a speeding car on to a yacht filled with gunmen. He comes off as a likeable dude, but if you think about it he's really messed up.

Michael is somewhere in between. All three main characters are mentally ill, but it's counterbalanced by all the side characters being terrible people as well. It's all trashy humans, top to bottom. The closest thing to a good person in the entire story is Patricia, who is knowingly married to a mob boss.

So if the protagonists could make choices that decent human beings would make, they'd actually be wildly out of place in this game's world.

I probably shouldn't say this but due to my brain damage I not only have some problems with my reflexs like I mentioned here before, but certain emotional problems I mostly control with medication. That said over the many years of dealing with this I've been diagnosed and misdiagnosed many times and that has included everything from Bi-Polar to Borderline Personality (one people always forget about, this happened when I was very young). Given my situation I did a crazy amount of research into these things. When I was in college I pursued a degree in forensics (did not succeed for financial reasons) but successfully took classes in things like criminal psychology and abnormal psychology. I wound up working as security for two Casinos for 10 years (6 years at one, 4 at the other).

At any rate I have no way of proving all that anyway, but I will say the whole issue of brain conditions and mental illness is complicated and few people generally have just one condition. A behavior pattern is caused by a combination of traits and defects. Both psychopaths and sociopaths can be either loud and aggressive, or quiet and withdrawn depending on what their overall situation is. I will also tell you from long experience that at the end of the day the so called experts don't really know as much as they think they do. After all they tried to diagnose me as Borderline personality when I was like 11, and if you know anything about that it's really bad.... that's one of the traits of mother killers, and sociopaths like the fictional "Joker". Let's just say I basically wound up on the entirely opposite site of the entire security/law enforcement spectrum predicted by these so called experts.

The thing about fictional characters is that they are rarely written by people who are experts in mental health, or people who even know as much as I do. They come up with the traits that fit the story, and then try and come up with a diagnosis that could in some way justify it. In a Hollywood sense Trevor is a fine depiction of a generic psychopath criminal, and in context the concept works fine, though to be fair I don't know all his antics as I never seriously played single player as it was ruined for me.

At any rate if you are ever interested in reading some crime stuff by a team of writers who deal with mental illness and know their stuff, try and find an author called "Michael Slade" who writes a series of books about a team of special law enforcers in Canada. The books being what they are the stuff written is totally sensational to be entertaining, but he generally gets the jargon right. That is because "Michael Slade" is actually the shared pen name of Jay Clarke (a lawyer specializing in mental illness who has been involved in over 100 cases) who frequently collaberates under the "Slade" name with other experts in Canadian law enforcement. Weirdly even stuff I didn't believe could be true from what I knew wound up checking out when i researched it.

[CARLOSSPICYWEINER]

wow you are quite good at writing. at least your problems havent stuffed your ability to get the message out. i cant remember how to spell properly as well as all sorts of other issues. i want to express something good for you but cant get it out. power to you

[R1ch4rd N1x0n]

Originally posted by CARLOSSPICYWEINER:

wow you are quite good at writing. at least your problems havent stuffed your ability to get the message out. i cant remember how to spell properly as well as all sorts of other issues. i want to express something good for you but cant get it out. power to you

?

[PhotriusPyrelus]

I frankly don't know why Michael didn't put a bullet in his head the minute he showed back up... If this game gave the player any real agency, that's how I'd have solved the problem.

[in]

No, he's just a hipster.

[CARLOSSPICYWEINER]

Originally posted by R1ch4rd N1x0n:

Originally posted by CARLOSSPICYWEINER:

wow you are quite good at writing. at least your problems havent stuffed your ability to get the message out. i cant remember how to spell properly as well as all sorts of other issues. i want to express something good for you but cant get it out. power to you

?

see. you dont know what i mean. this is the world i live in

[Mr J]

This here's a good video on a TRUE psychopath, while also comparing Trevor to him. https://youtu.be/gwtbl_x24uU

[Phlanka]

Originally posted by Thorley23:

Originally posted by Jaq:

No, Trevor isn't a psychopath. He's a grade A classic sociopath. Psychopaths are the unemotional ones. Sociopaths are the raging, unstable ones. Many people mistakenly think it's the other way around.

Franklin is more on the spectrum of a psychopath. The most emotion you get out of him is frustration when a scheme doesn't work out, but it's the type of frustration appropriate for when a restaurant gets your delivery order wrong, rather than for killing dozens of people without the expected financial reward. Psychopaths have trouble forming normal relationships, lack life goals, and are prone to taking dumb risks due to not being able to judge the value of their own lives or those of others. Remember that the very first thing Franklin does upon meeting Michael is jump from the hood of a speeding car on to a yacht filled with gunmen. He comes off as a likeable dude, but if you think about it he's really messed up.

Michael is somewhere in between. All three main characters are mentally ill, but it's counterbalanced by all the side characters being terrible people as well. It's all trashy humans, top to bottom. The closest thing to a good person in the entire story is Patricia, who is knowingly married to a mob boss.

So if the protagonists could make choices that decent human beings would make, they'd actually be wildly out of place in this game's world.

I probably shouldn't say this but due to my brain damage I not only have some problems with my reflexs like I mentioned here before, but certain emotional problems I mostly control with medication. That said over the many years of dealing with this I've been diagnosed and misdiagnosed many times and that has included everything from Bi-Polar to Borderline Personality (one people always forget about, this happened when I was very young). Given my situation I did a crazy amount of research into these things. When I was in college I pursued a degree in forensics (did not succeed for financial reasons) but successfully took classes in things like criminal psychology and abnormal psychology. I wound up working as security for two Casinos for 10 years (6 years at one, 4 at the other).

At any rate I have no way of proving all that anyway, but I will say the whole issue of brain conditions and mental illness is complicated and few people generally have just one condition. A behavior pattern is caused by a combination of traits and defects. Both psychopaths and sociopaths can be either loud and aggressive, or quiet and withdrawn depending on what their overall situation is. I will also tell you from long experience that at the end of the day the so called experts don't really know as much as they think they do. After all they tried to diagnose me as Borderline personality when I was like 11, and if you know anything about that it's really bad.... that's one of the traits of mother killers, and sociopaths like the fictional "Joker". Let's just say I basically wound up on the entirely opposite site of the entire security/law enforcement spectrum predicted by these so called experts.

The thing about fictional characters is that they are rarely written by people who are experts in mental health, or people who even know as much as I do. They come up with the traits that fit the story, and then try and come up with a diagnosis that could in some way justify it. In a Hollywood sense Trevor is a fine depiction of a generic psychopath criminal, and in context the concept works fine, though to be fair I don't know all his antics as I never seriously played single player as it was ruined for me.

At any rate if you are ever interested in reading some crime stuff by a team of writers who deal with mental illness and know their stuff, try and find an author called "Michael Slade" who writes a series of books about a team of special law enforcers in Canada. The books being what they are the stuff written is totally sensational to be entertaining, but he generally gets the jargon right. That is because "Michael Slade" is actually the shared pen name of Jay Clarke (a lawyer specializing in mental illness who has been involved in over 100 cases) who frequently collaberates under the "Slade" name with other experts in Canadian law enforcement. Weirdly even stuff I didn't believe could be true from what I knew wound up checking out when i researched it.

Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?

[Thorley23]

Originally posted by Phlanka:

Originally posted by Thorley23:

Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?

Your right, too much personal information nobody cares about. I tend to ramble when I'm bored and can't get on anything to entertain myself.

That said to answer the question they are okay but a little before my time. I tend to be more of a fan of Hard Rock and Metal.

[SophieSkyrim1984]

Trevor is the person we all wish we could be. But cannot, because we stick by our morals. As for Trevor the untamed nature of his character, makes him our fantasy come true in the virtual sense. He is neither complex or indifferent to his actions. He just does as he does it

[bigbenisdaman]

Unk Trevor's just good o'l country folk.

[Heat, the Genius]

Trevor is a nice guy.