Gameplay Journal Entry #3

Videogame Modification: Grand Theft Auto V: VR Mod

Playing Grand Theft Auto V when it first released back in 2013 felt like an industry game changer. Video games before it has never captured its simulated worlds to such great detail. Rockstar has once again set the bar for open world games. I played it again a year later when it rereleased on the Xbox One/PS4 generation. It had updated it’s graphics and added a first-person camera option. This was the first time a player could view the rich and detailed world from the first-person perspective. It was something to marvel at, but still not entirely intuitive and not really practical while trying to drive, aim, and shoot all at once due to the limitations of a standard gamepad. It was nice for casual appreciation of the game world, but not great for actually playing the game missions. Enter LukeRoss00 and his GTA V Real VR Mod. You can now view and play the game entirely in first-person mode because camera/view control has been separated from the controller and is now controlled via the player’s VR headset, leaving all other inputs for the gamepad. The combination just feels natural and intuitive. Playing GTA V again in VR makes it feel like a completely new game. The shift in perspective adds more weight and gravity to your every move, making the game more visceral and thrilling.

The mod is simple in theory. It just replaces the camera controls from the gamepad to the VR headset, but it took quite a long time to get it functional. All other aspects of the game and engine are unchanged. Schleiner’s concept of the parasite asserts that “modders occupy an interior critical position, chewing on the walls of the game engine from the inside” (48). LukeRoss00 took the engine and tweaked it slightly from within to create a completely new way to play GTA V. I will be playing GTA V in VR from now on.

GTA V: Real VR Mod Installation and Gameplay

Sources:

Schleiner, Anne-Marie. The Player’s Power to Change the Game: Ludic Mutation. Amsterdam University Press, 2018.