The simple warning logo for airbags (see above) found on most vehicles sold in North America today (exceptions include motorcycles and Hoverounds), demonstrates why Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) is about as realistic as betting your rent and your insulin on winning the lottery and expecting everything to work out a-okay. As "real" as some people like to think the GTA series is there are these great big holes in "reality" that we all seem to willfully ignore.
The first hole is a complete lack of airbags. During GTA V this only occurred to me after I launched one of the protagonists into the air while behind the wheel of a big SUV. It was an impressive crash! At one point the vehicle spun sideways about thirty feet off the ground, like a vehicular Frisbee, clipped a tree then rolled down an embankment. The SUV was dented and smoking a little, and all the windows were blown out but it was still driveable.
No matter how fast I drive a vehicle into stationary objects or other vehicles, airbags are never deployed. I can understand why the developers might have balked at installing airbags in every vehicle in Los Santos -- I had my transmission changed once and it cost a fortune! -- but what about just cars the protagonists drive? There might have been some gameplay considerations, I suppose.
Would players like the momentary blindness, possibly a skull fracture or a concussion, or coping with a broken arm because the protagonist was talking on the phone at the time the airbag was deployed?
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Do people just not use seat belts
or do car manufacturers not make them? |
Besides frontal airbags, it's more and more common for side-impact airbags to be a standard feature in cars and some trucks, and there are plenty of "new" vehicles in GTA V's Los Santos. Maybe the video game world isn't ready for that kind of realism in an open world sandbox experience.
I started to think that maybe I was just being overly picky about some of the phrasing that reviewers were using back in September 2013 when the game originally launched.
"...San Andreas is the most realistic virtual world I've visited..."It's a video game. I know what they mean by "realistic" in that context.
- Chris Plante, Polygon
And you're probably thinking the same thing.
Then I noticed that none of the damn characters -- playable, NPCs -- ever put their seatbelts on. So besides wildly out-of-control crime in Los Santos, every single car owner is living in the Danger Zone all the time!
You'd think they'd actually want to be more careful living in a world where the human population is in permanent decline.
Go to the beach; no kids.
Go to the Ferris Whale on the pier; no kids.
Go to the observatory; no elementary school or high school field trips.
The terrifying implication is that Los Santos is a few months away from the worst parts of "Children of Men." With no youngsters coming up to replace the ageing population, eventually infrastructure and the economy of Los Santos will collapse like a house on fire. If there are no babies being born, Los Santos' continued existence hinges on everyone living as long as possible by wearing their damn seatbelts, staying away from crime, and installing some friggin' airbags!
This absence of children might also explain why it seems that most everyone has a copy (or multiple copies) of the Kama Sutra... Perhaps copies of the book are handed out on street corners by the local government in some kind of wild thrust at trying to encourage people to copulate and start having kids again before a dystopia present takes permanent hold.
One other thought on the economy of Los Santos, it's incredible to me that there aren't auto glass repair shops on every other corner. So far, 5 or 6 hours into the game, I don't think I've ever gone through an intersection or turned a corner without smashing the glass in my vehicle or the vehicle of some hapless NPC (never mind what happens during shoot-outs). Clearly, someone hasn't spotted the obvious need in Los Santos. There's a fortune to be made!
- Aaron Simmer
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