I've reached Trevor, Trevor's rad.
Yeah, they all suck but they've always all sucked. Lamar's comment in the motorcycle repo mission pretty much hits hte GTA formula on the head. You work for a guy a few times, he sends you on a big mission, it goes bad, he's dead, move on. But lamar's a fuckup like all the other supporting characters.
Also, I'm starting to think GTA 5's wound system is even better than 4's. I dunno if caring so much makes me a serial killer, but I went on a cop-killer rampage and recorded it to play around in the editor. GTA 4 had very reactive models and all but they also had a very clear health system so you always knew when somebody was alive or dead. There was alive, on the ground and trying to get up, mortally wounded, and dead. There's lots of interesting variations now that I've had a chance to watch a very spooky slow motion video of cops getting shot. Sometimes they fall down and sit there for a few seconds, then slump, sometimes they try to roll over or move around, sometimes they do the classic lie there and squirm for a while, and it's all in the euphoria engine so it's not canned animations. Great fun for serial killers like me.
These kinds of details aren't the kind of thing you notice when you're actually fighting which is why I probably didn't realize how nice it was.