“Tried, but didn’t admire doing crime,” Musk wrote in a reply to an X employee who tweeted that he’d never played any game in the “Grand Theft Auto” series. “GTA5 required shooting police officers in the opening scene. Just couldn’t do it.”
Tried, but didn’t admire doing crime. GTA5 required shooting police officers in the opening scene. Just couldn’t do it.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 5, 2023
Musk is referring to the game’s prologue, where there’s a mandatory shootout with the local police after a heist gone wrong. However, though the game certainly gives the player the impression that they must shoot the police to advance, that’s not entirely true. In 2019, as part of the first leg of his “pacifist challenge” — advancing through the game while attempting to only use lethal force in cases where the game won’t progress unless you do so — YouTuber DarkViperAU showed that, though it can be a bit of a slog, you can advance through the police shootout by allowing your CPU-controlled teammates to take out the cops themselves.
Well, mostly. There’s one officer that the game won’t let the non-player characters conclude, but the player can advance the story by knocking out that cop with a non-lethal melee attack.
It’s unclear whether or not Musk was entirely serious in his comment about his distaste for the “Grand Theft Auto V” prologue. Regardless, his assessment of what the game “makes” the player do was not entirely correct.
