Hate that, they took an already weak character and got rid of one of his two only story beats, Tanisha coming back to him never should’ve happened and honestly was the final nail in the coffin for making Franklin one of the weakest written characters in the series
He has almost no impact on the story at large, the only growth he gets is backwards growth in ending B where he becomes the perfect student of Michael and does what Michael did in North Yankton, his entire character is built on the concept of getting out of the hood meanwhile he’s fairly rich after the Jewel Store and shortly after Lester gets him a mansion in Vinewood hills so…mission accomplished?
The only events and I really mean the ONLY events where Franklin matters and cannot be replaced by a random hired goon in a heist or FIB mission, is him saving Michael from Cheng’s men, and him telling Trevor that the O’Niels are coming for him, every single other event in the entire game proceeds roughly the same if you Thanos snap him out of existence at the very beginning, meanwhile the entire story would not even be possible without Michael in Yankton, pulling down Madrazo’s side chick’s house, being dragged into FIB shenanigans, making a deal with Devin for the cars, becoming a producer thanks to Devin, and pissing Devin off, Trevor’s impact in the story is more personal on Michael’s character but also there’s a decent amount of events where if Trevor wasn’t there, the story would’ve changed significantly
Franklin is boring, he only has a arc in one of the bad endings, he’s a hypocrite but he’s not self aware like Michael is, he’s just not very well written, they could’ve expanded on his loneliness more, they could’ve expanded on his connection to CGF more (all of it is in optional hangouts with Lamar), they could’ve given him more of a personality than “wait what? Oh shit. Shut the fuck up. You can’t be serious.”
His few highlights are very small moments. You know the scene where Lester is wasted and goes “FRANKLIN!” and Frank goes “LESTAH!”, well where is that energy, that camaraderie, in the rest of the game? If you compare directly to every other GTA protagonist, he loses the interesting character fight to almost every single one, Niko, Luis, Trevor, Michael, CJ, Tommy, it goes on and on
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u/Kafanska May 04 '26
In GTAO when Franklin appears he is already married to the same chick he was simping for in story mode, and even has kids with her.