The Grand Theft Auto franchise is littered with mystery, myths and fan theories, but intrigue still surrounds the randomness of the worlds’ NPCs.
One streamer — or artist, I guess — has taken it upon themselves to find out exactly what it is that your average Los Santos citizen gets up to … and the results are rather … well, strange.
Brent Watanabe has kickstarted the “San Andreas Community Cam”. It’s a livestream that runs around the clock, chronicling the lives of five random NPCs as they randomly roam around the city of Grand Theft Auto V.
“San Andreas Community Cam is a live video stream from a computer running a modded version of Grand Theft Auto V, hosted on Twitch.tv,” Watanabe says in a statement. “The mod follows the citizens of San Andreas, a fictional state in GTA V based on California. The citizens are programmed to control themselves and make their own decisions, with no one actually playing the game. The citizens are ‘playing themselves’, with all activity unscripted.”
Just a quick glance at the stream shows these characters bumping into walls, being run over, and getting caught up in gang warfare.
This isn’t the first project of its kind from Watanabe: he did a similar thing with a deer, following it through remote San Andreas before ending up in heated gang territory in downtown Los Santos. Good times.
The San Andreas Community Cam went live on Inauguration Day, and for some reason has a crying track played over the stream, which one has to assume is a reflection of those hyperventilating over the election results.
It all makes for a fascinating albeit incredibly creepy livestream.
What exactly Watanabe plans to do with the footage is unknown, and while a majority of it shows NPCs bumping into and staring at walls for long periods of times, there’s the occasional moment of hilarity. Watch it below.
Gaetano Prestia
Tuesday 24th of January 2017
Fairly certainly he put the cry track of them :P
StuM91
Wednesday 25th of January 2017
I prefer my theory.
StuM91
Tuesday 24th of January 2017
I think the AI has been driven insane by it's new found freedom, they are all crying.