Messed Up Things NPCs Did In GTA
The world of Grand Theft Auto is filled with crooks and scammers, criminals and cutthroats. And that's just the playerbase. The game rewards the ruthless pursuit of cash monies and acclaim, because the characters you play as aren't exactly lawful or even good. The games are compelling because they allow for players to do things they (hopefully) would never dare to IRL: steal cars, hold up convenience stores, and speed down the highway at 200 mph to avoid the cops.
Players with penchants for car chases fit right in. Agents of chaos flock to a game that has both explosives and strip joints. The recently returned renaissance of GTA roleplaying servers best demonstrates the chaos of living in a game crafted by Rockstar. But in the game itself, whether players are going through the main story or creating their own, the NPCs are the ones to watch out for. It turns out that whether you're in Los Santos or San Andreas, the NPCs of the world are just as prone to criminal causes or outright unruly behavior.
The alleged conspiracy NPCs
There's something ... wrong with the NPCs of Los Santos. No, they're not craving flesh and rising from the dead after a mystery sickness. (Although that sounds like a really cool mode. Take notes, Rockstar.) This alleged phenomenon that players have been experiencing is less The Walking Dead and more The Happening. One player was sitting in their car, completely still, when an NPC-driven car suddenly veered off the road into them. Another was cruising down the highway when a car decided to do a quick U-turn.
This has gone from strange, to kind of funny, to outright frustrating. Players are losing money because of this glitch in the system. If you're driving an exotic car to buyers in the Import/Export expansion, it doesn't help when NPCs make illegal turns and crash into the formerly spotless vehicle. Reckless, seemingly hostile drivers have made the community not only angry over lost in-game gains, but also paranoid. What does this mean? Why is it happening? Looking into the code hasn't yielded any results. AI behavior is by all accounts unchanged, according to some dataminers.
Some players theorize that this is a purposeful choice by Rockstar in order to scare players fearful of losing in-game money into buying in-game cash with IRL cash via Shark Cards. Others say that this is just the natural result of a city filled with drug running. Can't drive straight when you're high out of your mind, right?
Please stop calling me
If you've been a fan of the GTA series for a while now, you're probably familiar with the fact that your alleged friends in the story mode can be ... irritating, at best. Veterans of GTA 4's Liberty City are forever scarred by the constant calls from their in-game cousin, Roman Bellic, who just couldn't seem to go a day without bowling. This annoying habit managed to follow players into the city of Los Santos. An Easter egg beneath the waves known as the Hatch features a message in Morse code: "Hey, you never call, how'd you fancy going bowling?"
In the same vein, Rockstar deemed it necessary that even without a needy cousin, player's phones should be blowing up near constantly. The function of phones in GTA 5 is pretty cool, but players actually feel compelled to throw the thing out of a helicopter more often than not. Why? Simeon won't stop calling. This new Roman Bellic is at all times asking the player to repossess cars that he sold to people who couldn't afford them in the first place. Sure, taking his call and a couple vehicles results in significant pay out, but is it worth the hassle of constantly denying his calls when you're trying to do something else in-game? Maybe not.
"Killing makes my **** hard" and other quotes from NOOSE
It should come as no surprise that the law enforcement agencies within GTA are just as crooked as the people they arrest. Rockstar is an expert at creating corrupt worlds, and the greed, violence, and outright weirdness the games are known for is included even in the offices of those charged with keeping the peace. Other than the fact that they are fairly poor at doing their jobs, it should be noted that the NPCs of the aptly named National Office of Security Enforcement, or NOOSE, are ... a little too into their jobs.
Getting a three- or four-star wanted level will unleash the wrath of NOOSE. Local police call in these hyped-up tactical teams to help deal with whatever mayhem players have wrought. They wear helmets, goggles, and ballistic armor and, like most denizens of Los Santos, are of a shoot first, ask questions later sort. They shout the usual commands, like "Stop, right now!" and "You're going down!" But they distinguish themselves as violent parodies of police brutality with the line, "Killing makes my d*** hard!" Not something you want to hear with a four-star wanted level. Or, you know, ever.
The daily routines of an NPC
Ever wonder what GTA NPCs get up to when you're not looking? No? Well, you're about to find out anyway. We have to give Rockstar credit for making the AI in GTA pretty smart. Even unimportant bystanders can drive, follow the rules of the road (sometimes), call the cops, cower in fear, and yell out some choice expletives when angered. When they don't have something directly in front of them, like a player or a crime scene, to react to, do they live their own complicated lives in private? Not really, as it turns out.
San Andreas Community Cam, a kind of art installation livestream project created by artist Brent Watanabe, followed NPCs around the map 24/7, getting a never-before-seen perspective on their coded lives. With hundreds of hours of content, the project has observed NPCs going about their business, with brief interludes of random running or walking directly into walls.
Watanabe had previously gained notoriety by launching the San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam, a kind of surreal journey that followed a modded deer around the map. It turns out that a single deer can get into a quite a bit of trouble, too. "In the past 48 hours, the deer has wandered along a moonlit beach, caused a traffic jam on a major freeway, been caught in a gangland gun battle, and been chased by the police," Watanabe said at the time.
No head? No hospital
Usually, it's the players' messed-up actions that we are surprised (or not so surprised) by. The arguably good name of GTA lives in infamy because of guys who publicize their love of killing in-game prostitutes and pedestrians in the most brutal of ways. When we're tearing through the streets after a successful robbery, we're not thinking about the pedestrian NPCs that we may accidentally (or not so accidentally) crash into. They're not really people after all, right?
Even if players aren't interested in the well-being of pedestrians, the city is. Mostly. When players beat up, shoot, run over, or otherwise brutalize pedestrians, an ambulance will arrive shortly to heal them. Outright miracle workers, the EMTs can heal just about anything. But they give up if the NPC has been burned by a Molotov cocktail or has been shot in the head. In games past, no head meant no hospital. Paramedics wouldn't even bother showing up. The folks in Los Santos at least show up in order to document the death, but severe burns and beheadings were previously not even worth the time of busy EMTs. That's just cold, and probably illegal, like a lot of stuff that goes down on the streets of GTA.
Wade Herbert has a clown fetish
Maybe there's nothing outright messed up with letting your freak flag fly, but it can sometimes be weird. And uncomfortable. Especially if you're embracing your dedication to being a Fanta-spraying, horrorcore-loving, whoop-whooping Juggalo in the middle of a strip club. Every. Single. Day.
Wade Herbert is Trevor's buddy and not the brightest crayon in the box. He's fairly morally gray, happily going along with crimes that Trevor commits and mentioning that he's down with a good, old-fashioned murder every now and again. For the most part, he spends his time at the Vanilla Unicorn strip club. He stays there so long that he sometimes misses the sunlight, and he says he "lost count of how many boobies I seen." But that doesn't stop him from trying to convince the strippers to come over to the Juggalo side, saying, "What would really turn me on is you wearing clown face." Or, a little more desperately, "Do any of you ladies like wearing clownface?" Nah, it's just you Wade. And no, the DJ will not put on horrorcore, stop asking.
Millennials (and cannibals) ruin everything
Ever get frustrated with kids these days? Dang millennials have ruined everything, or so believes the members of the Altruist Cult in the world of GTA. These elderly, nudist techno-Luddites blame all the problems in the world on the generations that came after them. They've made something of a village for themselves where they can be old and bitter together in peace. Now, being wrinkly, indecent jerks doesn't make them messed up. Their proclivities for cannibalism and kidnapping (not necessarily in that order) does.
Everyone's favorite conspiracy theorist Ron Jakowski will mention to players via text that the Altruist Cult will pay cash for "lost souls." They just want to have them over for dinner, no worries. Get some "young blood" in the camp. There's a couple news articles in-game about hikers having gone missing, too. The final clue as to the true nature of the cult is the fact that a random event can be triggered in which you witness two members trying to kidnap a woman. If you choose to do some kidnapping yourself for the Altruists, you'll eventually be betrayed and forced to kill the lot of them.
Afterwards, the Senora Beacon Newspaper reports that the shootout was an apparent mass suicide and confirms that they were "involved in some grisly practices including human sacrifice and possible cannibalism." Apparently the Altruist Cult believed that they could reclaim their youth by drinking the blood of young victims.
Driving down an undrivable road makes total sense
We would never accuse the NPCs in GTA 5 of being good drivers. They're adequate at best, making their way through the world with relatively little incident. That is, if they're not suddenly trying their hardest to crash into players. Usually they're not, however, and sometimes when they crash, it's their own fault rather than the player's reckless driving.
Near the entrance of the scenic Marlowe Vineyards on Buen Vino Road, players can park and watch the sunset on the rolling hills. And probably catch two or three cars crash, flip, or otherwise eat it. For some reason, the turn onto this road is near impossible for most NPCs to navigate. They go too fast, bumping over the guardrail and then losing control. Bigger trucks are apparently less likely to crash, but smaller cars just can't seem to avoid flipping. Sometimes they take out the fences of neighboring houses, other times swerve into oncoming traffic, but they always right themselves and continue driving as if nothing happened.
Shoot first, ask questions later (when you're dead)
The fun part about GTA Online is getting up to no good, but that comes at a price. In the story mode of GTA 5, committing a minor crime like drunk driving, flipping off an officer, or killing a pedestrian (?!) will result in a one-star wanted level. This sends the police after the player, determined to arrest you. Get one star in GTA Online, however, and you'll be met with a less forgiving, more bloodthirsty police force of the shoot first, ask questions later variety. They will shoot to kill on sight.
Even if you give up peacefully, you'll still get wasted by the cops. As a whole, people in the world of GTA are by default hostile. Everyone from pedestrians to soldiers seem to have an impressive vocabulary when it comes to insults especially. Accidentally staring for too long at certain NPCs like security guards will lead to them getting angry. Prostitutes will call the cops (?) if you creep around for too long, too. People in Los Santos are rightfully paranoid, living in a city with regular car chases, explosions, and constant petty crime.
Leave me alone!
Los Santos Customs is the "national leader in car customization, not to be confused with the lovely people who greet you with rubber gloves on arrival at Los Santos International Airport." Their garages scattered throughout the city allow you to drive in and soup-up or repair their vehicles. A parody of West Coast Customs, the garage featured on the MTV show Pimp My Ride, service is top notch. The mechanics at LSC don't care too much if what they do is strictly legal, allowing players to buy questionable items and even hide out from the cops. Entering the garage will get rid of pesky wanted levels, as long as you make sure the cops don't spot you entering. LSC doesn't want to get fingered as an accomplice.
They also don't want indecisive customers. If you enter and browse around without buying anything, players will get a hostile, annoyed response: "C'mon, don't waste my time." Business is booming, apparently, because LSC can afford to scare off annoying customers. Unlike in other video games wherein you can act strangely without incident, the folks at LSC will yell "Leave me alone!" if you enter and exit too often.
Messed-up code made a ghost
This NPC isn't messed up so much as messed up, as in developers screwed up and accidentally created an urban legend in San Andreas. No, you're not going crazy, as it just so happens: this guy appears in the strangest of places. The Unknown Guy, as he's come to be called, is not your average pedestrian. There's something ... off about him.
First of all, this guy is the only one who runs the trains. Despite being dressed in a hoodie and denim jacket, he's apparently the driver of every last train in the state. He's also been spotted driving harvesters in the countryside, shooting into the air, and getting attacked by the Grove Street Gang. What's interesting is that if you, dear player, attack him, he doesn't respond. He's got nerves of steel and an expressionless face. And some messed-up code. His character model isn't assigned to any specific group, meaning that he can pop up anywhere. A virtual ghost, Unknown Guy might be a taxi driver, a gang member, or even a hillbilly depending on his mood.
Killing Bigfoot
The legendary beast known as the Sasquatch is an important part of Los Santos history. Apparently. The seal of the city features an image of Bigfoot himself, and legend has it you can spot the creature on Mount Chiliad. Turns out, you actually can, which makes for a fun Easter egg. Just don't be fooled by the fact that there's a crazed man in a costume who says, and we quote, "It's perfectly normal to admit to being aroused role-playing dressed as a fantastical beast ... Woof!"
Believe it or not, that's not the messed up part of this story. In GTA 5, there are a few ways to spot Bigfoot hiding out on the mountain, and another way to become the beast. Eating Golden Peyote plants in the proper order will transform players into Sasquatch himself. This also summons The Beast, an NPC in a werewolf mask with super strength and speed. The Beast has been featured in Freemodes before like Hunt the Beast and Beast vs Slasher, but this time he's out for blood. Although we're sure that this is all part of an elaborate drug trip, it's totally not cool to attack such a rare creature as Bigfoot. They're probably endangered!