There’s a lot of shooting and driving in Grand Theft Auto missions, they’re kind of your main verbs in the game. You drive, shoot, and drive some more with the possibility of shooting again. They’re not very dynamic as a wireframe, so it’s a good thing that Rockstar leads the industry in storytelling, character, and satire.
Missions burst with thematic meaning, every second an opportunity to push someone forward or revel in gags. It doesn’t really matter what you do. In GTA, a mission that largely consists of buying cargo shorts against your will can rival casino heists, mid-air hijackings, and all-out urban warfare.
Friend Request is an early storyline mission in Grand Theft Auto V. Tutorials are behind us but Trevor has yet to join the team. Retired crook Michael De Santa is in deep trouble, so he turns to his old accomplice Lester for help. The free-as-in-speech-not-as-in-beer software enthusiast seems willing to set up a new job, but first he needs Michael to blow open the walled garden that is Jay Norris’s skull.
The CEO of LifeInvader, a clear stand-in for Facebook, is about to unveil his new surveillance nightmare: a prototype smartphone designed to “dock” with every single aspect of your existence. It’s one intrusion too far for a reclusive crank like Lester, so he tasks us with sabotaging it in a mission so linear it makes Marvel’s Wolverine look like Morrowind.
Part 1: What You Do
Not a whole lot! Many GTA missions stray from the shoot-em-up template, exploring the mundanity of the contemporary life that Rockstar aims to emulate. Some of our fondest GTA memories involve doing yoga and winning danceoffs, but Friend Request is uneventful even by those standards. Your first task is to go shopping, swinging by the ersatz Urban Outfitters for some techy threads.
Rockstar’s reputation for railroaded, handholdy missions is notorious and not entirely unearned, and here it’s at its most egregious. During the short trip to SubUrban, Michael is free to shoot guns and cause trouble despite the hefty Jansport slung jauntily over his shoulder. You’ll have to lose your wanted level to continue, which is reasonable enough.
Your options dwindle as soon as you enter the store. You must buy a vest and shorts. Choose a festive Aloha shirt or a comfy flannel and the shopkeeper will bar your progression and roast you with a frankly unwarranted “what are those?”
Once you’re in disguise, you can equip guns but can’t fire them without triggering a failure state. You can approach the LifeInvader office, but the front door won’t open, and trying to blow your way in will force a restart. Drop a sticky bomb and its fission mailed before it even hits the ground.
You have to pose as an IT temp, share a cig with this guy Rickie, and follow the overpaid programmer through the open plan office. You’ve now lost the ability to sprint, and besides an unlocked basement, all of the conference rooms with cutesy names are inaccessible. You can only observe until it’s time to close some pop-ups.
This is probably the most “gameplay” in Friend Request, if you consider clicking to be ludologically satisfying, and even here you’re limited. You can’t click any of the websites, not that you’d want to, you sicko, nor can you open any of the enticing folders and hard drives that are just sitting on the desktop begging to be file-explored.
Once you clean up Rickie’s infested computer you can access the LifeInvader phone prototype in an unguarded room. There’s no need to be sneaky, no one can see you and there’s literally nothing you can do to draw their attention as you fit the device with a miniature explosive. Once the job is done, you have no option but to politely leave. You can’t play the arcade games, avail yourself of productivity-enhancing snacks, or even follow this guy into his job interview. He’ll just wait there, clutching his resume, “#OpenToWork” eternally circling his LinkedIn profile years before the green frame of shame was invented.
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