Don’t tell Nintendo, but I turned GTA 5 into Pokémon Go using a mod

I’ve been trying to convert Grand Theft Auto 5 into GTA 6 using mods for about a week now, and I’ve learnt a lot. For instance, most things will die if hit by a car at more than the speed of sound.

But I’ve also learned this: Los Santos is a lonely city. GTA 6’s core is the Bonnie-and-Clyde love story of its protagonists, but Franklin, Michael and Trevor are insular men. They cruise the sun-drenched highways with no one in the passenger seat. I needed to change that. I needed to give them companions. I needed them to be the very best, like no one ever was.

I installed Pokémon Go GTA Edition.

Pokémon Go GTA Edition turns (stay with me) GTA 5 into Pokémon Go. The streets become denuded of people and filled with Geodudes, Charmandi, and Pikachu. Maybe. I never actually saw Pikachu. There was a Squirtle, though.

I’m fairly certain that only Trevor can do the Poke-hunting, or it is possible that some previously installed mod has broken this one. Either way, out he went on Franklin’s motorbike, on the prowl for new best friends. In what news reporters might call ‘drive-bys’ I captured for myself a Geodude and a Squirtle.

But some Pokémon resist friendship. For instance, Charmander, who broke free of my pokeball and began to curse at me in a thick eastern European accent, just like in the anime. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that my encounter with Charmander was not a happy one. We came to blows in the road, and the last I left him he was burbling face-down in the tarmac having taken a powerful yet precise right hook to his snout. Don’t worry everyone, he’s just fainted.

(Image credit: Rockstar)

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