GTA 5 graphic torture mission deemed 'entirely unnecessary' in retrospect

In three months, Grand Theft Auto V will finally turn 10 years old. Feel old yet?

Seriously, where has the time gone? Gamers have been wandering around Los Santos for almost a full decade, and we’re still not sure when we’ll finally be able to dive into the next game in the series. Players have certainly had plenty of time to contemplate GTA V’s content (both good and bad), and many are in agreement that the controversial torture mission was totally “unnecessary”.

As UNILAD reports, the By The Book mission (which players have to complete in order to finish the game) sees Trevor torture suspected terrorist Ferdinand Kerimov, and players can choose to carry this torture out in a number of brutal ways. From extracting teeth to shocking him with a car battery and even waterboarding him, the scene was highly contentious when the game first released, and for good reason. All these years on, many fans of the series still believe that it went too far.

“It seemed gratuitous and unnecessary at the time, and it kind of is really, but with hindsight it serves as a reminder that characters in GTA aren't fun, nice people who happen to be crooks. They're horrible,” @onion2k tweeted last month.

Other fans have previously expressed the same sentiment: “Holy s**t man the GTA V torture scene is so brutal and excessive. That s**t was so unnecessary[,] why [the f**k] does it take that long? Like damn that s**t was f**ked up man. Shouldn’t even be in the game,” @madvllainy wrote. “If I had known GTA V had torture scene, I don’t think I would’ve bought this game… There’s literally no reason to make a player torture an NPC. It should’ve been skippable, that s**t was unnecessary,” @8lackswan_ttv said.

Let's hope that Rockstar Games has learned its lesson by the time GTA VI comes out.