In the end, the final outcome was that all three protagonists would face the crisis together.
Three men with completely different personalities, brought onto the same side by circumstance, stood shoulder to shoulder to overcome their difficulties.
The first problem they had to deal with was the gang boss.
At the beginning, the gang boss had forced Mike to pay up because his house had been destroyed.
Later, after seeing that the three of them were quite capable, he decided to keep blackmailing them, forcing them to do all kinds of dirty work.
It was obvious this kind of "job" would never end.
Mike's life was a complete mess, yet he still loved his plain, ordinary life.
Just like this man himself—his home life was dull and tedious, but he still loved that simple normalcy.
And to protect that ordinary life, sometimes you had to make decisions that were decisive and ruthless enough.
So Mike, Trevor, and Franklin joined forces to take down the gang boss.
During this process, the unique gameplay traits of all three characters were displayed perfectly.
Trevor, in full berserk mode, slaughtered countless enemies without restraint.
Franklin, calm and collected, relied on his superb driving skills and his innate slow-motion racing ability to take out enemy after enemy.
And Mike—his time-slowing ability let him eliminate foes with pinpoint precision.
The three characters took turns appearing, each handling enemies in their own way, until they finally confronted the gang boss himself.
Amid the gang boss's desperate pleas, a single gunshot blew his head apart, completely ending the era of blackmail.
After that came the confrontation with the two government agencies.
Because both agencies were strapped for funding, one of them resorted to coercing the protagonists into committing robberies for them.
A government agency inciting civilians to risk their lives committing crimes—on paper, it sounded like a ridiculous joke.
Yet as the man played through this part, he couldn't laugh at all.
Because given the current state of America, he genuinely felt that something like this wasn't impossible.
The game was filled with absurd, farcical elements.
And in the final battle, the three protagonists once again showcased their distinctive mechanics.
The intensity was even greater than the earlier mission against the gang boss.
This man, already close to forty, hadn't expected to feel his blood boiling like this again.
It was a truly long-lost sensation.
Beside him, his two children stared unblinkingly at the screen.
They didn't know whether the game's content might have a negative influence on kids.
But once they started watching, they simply couldn't look away.
Especially in this final stage—Gamestar Electronic Entertainment had pulled out every trick they had.
Brand-new technologies were applied specifically for this last mission.
The three protagonists had to eliminate those trash agents who had been blackmailing them and forcing them to do dirty work.
At the same time, they had to storm the agency headquarters and burn the entire data center to the ground, wiping out all the incriminating information about Mike and the others.
To make the finale truly unforgettable, the overall modeling and visual fidelity were pushed to their absolute limits.
Even the optimization that Gamestar Electronic Entertainment was always praised for struggled to keep up in this stage.
The stunning visuals felt like a movie you were actually inside of—only this movie was fully playable and interactive.
At the moment when Mike blew up the database, the man felt as if he could hear Mike letting out a long, deep breath.
As though he were finally expelling more than a decade of pent-up frustration in one go.
No one would ever blackmail him with his past again.
He would no longer be controlled by anyone.
From that moment on, he would step into a new life—
Returning to the plain, ordinary life he cherished so deeply.
As he played through that moment, the man unconsciously let out a long breath as well.
His nose even felt a little sore.
Ordinary life sometimes needs excitement—but ordinary life itself is incredibly precious.
As Mike destroyed the database, the explosion was so violent that the entire building began to collapse.
What followed was the classic "run before the explosion" sequence, much like Uncharted.
This segment had been crafted with the involvement of the Uncharted development team, who poured everything they were best at into it, giving Mike a spectacular send-off.
The building tilted, then split apart and crashed down.
Mike miraculously survived—and a short distance away, he calmly drank coffee with a group of bystanders, watching the chaos like a casual spectator.
Elsewhere, the agents who had been blackmailing them met their end under Trevor's gun.
With that, the story came to a close.
The story of Mike, Franklin, and Trevor was over.
During development, Takayuki had made adjustments and refinements to the gameplay.
The goal was to make the final scenes unforgettable.
That goal was clearly achieved.
Mike blowing up the database, escaping, then calmly watching the building collapse from the roadside became an image the man would never forget.
Elegant—truly elegant.
Calm composure beneath a thunderous explosion.
He was willing to call that moment a masterpiece of video-game art.
And then there was the moment when Trevor coldly executed the agents.
The camera focused on the upper half of Trevor's face, every detail in his eyes clearly visible.
Those eyes carried an overwhelming amount of emotion.
Even the most skilled veteran actors would struggle to convey that much with performance alone.
Some of those micro-expressions were things normal humans couldn't even produce.
Yet in that moment, no one would question the authenticity of those eyes.
As the gunshot rang out, blood splattered across the upper half of Trevor's face.
Then Trevor walked away coolly, exiting the scene without hesitation.
As for Franklin, he had his own moment to shine—driving Mike and Trevor out of the city, disappearing completely from everyone's sight.
Utterly exhilarating.
The man played until he felt completely satisfied.
Especially the final few missions—the narrative tension was incredibly dense.
It felt like his brain was being bombarded nonstop. By the time he finished those last two sequences, his head was buzzing.
But he wasn't tired at all—he was exhilarated.
The pacing of those two consecutive missions was perfect.
Takayuki knew that if there were yet another equally intense stage afterward, players would inevitably feel fatigued.
Ending the game with these two climactic missions was the optimal choice.
Any more, and players' delicate brains would exceed their cognitive load, diminishing their overall impression of the game.
All of this was the result of extensive testing grounded in psychology, neuroscience, and related fields.
One of the many crystallized achievements of an industrialized game-development process—refined into countless proven, standardized design principles.