Most players know just how wild the world of GTA is. Over-the-top gameplay with cars smashing into buildings and each other, seedy characters that you’re working for and against, and NPCs who are just going about their lives as the chaos and debauchery take place all around them. A short animation released last year by creators Joel Haver and Trent Lenkarski depicts this idea perfectly.
The short YouTube video - entitled “Tailing Missions from the NPC's Perspective” - shows off everything you might expect from a tailing mission in GTA, but from the perspective of an NPC. As one car - likely controlled by the player character - pummels another, two NPCs who happen to be members of the mafia sit in their car discussing the suspiciousness of the car behind them. Despite the massive amount of carnage caused by the car, they ultimately determine it to not be a threat since the car is 40 feet away from them - a nod to the logic that most tailing missions in GTA abide by. Get too close, you can spook the person you’re tailing and failing the mission. Stay just far enough away while still being clearly in the eyesight of a rearview mirror, and you’re a-ok.
The NPCs reach their destination and even though they had ample time to discuss business in the privacy of their vehicle, they decide instead to have the conversation in the wide-open alleyway as they walk into their hideout - again, as most NPCs in GTA tend to do. However, they keep getting interrupted by abrupt sounds behind them (the player character who is tailing them), resulting in buggy, overly repeated lines of dialogue, along with an incredible inability to notice the player character who can clearly be seen.
The short animation is both hilarious and easy on the eyes, with visuals that look similar to 2006’s A Scanner Darkly. What makes the short so entertaining is the way that Haver and Lenkarski perfect the in-game logic of most NPCs in the GTA series, and how, ultimately, most missions wind up becoming goofy. That’s really all part of the fun in GTA, though.
This isn’t the first video game-related short put out by Haver and Lenkarski. Haver’s YouTube page features a couple of other videos related to the RPG genre, which are both as funny and on-point as the NPC perspective video. Haver has committed to putting out these videos as a full-time gig, so be sure to subscribe to his YouTube and Patreon to check out his videos as they are released.