Watch: Invincible Deer wandering ‘Grand Theft Auto V’, causing shootouts and traffic jams

Wandering Deer!

I wrote a whole thing up about this, then WordPress shit the bed. So, uh. This is a pretty amazing piece of The Future. Grand Theft Auto V has been modified to feature an Invincible Deer. You can watch of said Invincible Deer. Wandering San Andreas, causing shootouts and traffic jams.

Kotaku:

Welcome to San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam, where viewers can watch a very special deer wander the wilds (and streets) of Los Santos. Frolicking along the sidewalk, stopping traffic, getting shot up by the cops, he does it all.

The deer is actually running on a slightly modified version of GTA V, which replaces the player character with…well, a deer. Who is autonomous, programmed to “wander and respond to it’s surroundings, interacting with the existing GTA V artifical intelligence”.

Here’s how creator Brett Watanabe explains it:

The deer has been programmed to control itself and make its own decisions, with no one actually playing the video game. The deer is ‘playing itself’, with all activity unscripted… and unexpected. 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.

To keep things fresh—and avoid any potential sticking—the deer teleports every few minutes to a new spot on the map, which if nothing else keeps things interesting.

You can follow the deer’s adventures below. As I type this, he’s walking around at the bottom of the ocean. It is surreal, and beautiful, and…oh, now he’s falling off a loading dock. And getting lost in a parking lot, while some lady yells at him. Oh deer.