I modded a GTA 6-like ‘wanted system’ into GTA 5

I imagine it like one of the cutscenes that play in Civilization when you construct a wonder of the world. A scant few days ago, humanity put its differences aside. The guns fell silent. Nary a harsh word was said. For a shining moment, we were one—ensconced in the warm glow of our television sets and monitors as we took in our first legitimate glimpse of Grand Theft Auto 6.

I guess people without Netflix subscriptions continued shooting each other.

(Image credit: Rockstar)

Anyway, amid the hullabaloo we got our first insight into how GTA 6’s wanted system will work. Seems simmy. Cops will now remember things like your physical description and the clothes you’re wearing as they work to bring you to justice, and it all, in general, seems a bit deeper and more involved than in GTAs of yore.

So I brought it to the GTAs of yore: VI Wanted System does what it says on the tin—it brings a facsimile of GTA 6’s cop-suspicion mechanics to GTA 5. Clothes, hair, and what-have-you all factor into the police’s hunt. Losing the heat doesn’t mean you’re free anymore: you’ll have to anonymise yourself to evade pursuit entirely.

I immediately put it to the test by opening fire on all and sundry in downtown Los Santos. Very quickly, the cops had my physical description and knew the expensive clothes I was wearing. This did not, necessarily, help them find me, as they were too busy dealing with their frictionless vehicles, ongoing gang warfare, and ambient hit squads that were also out to kill me. Nevertheless, they theoretically had a better chance of pinning me down than before.

(Image credit: Rockstar)

My attempts to lose the heat by dipping into a clothing store were foiled by the store’s ‘no selling to people flanked by angry, armed cops’ rule, so I was forced to dash home through the cacophonous and exploding streets of Los Santos in order to find a new shirt. This helped, somewhat, but the rest of me remained an issue.

San Andreas’ barbers are less strict about their clientele, it seems, because I was able to get a haircut just fine, the probably offensively camp stylist remarking that my outfit was “Goooooorgeous” in what felt like a divine stamp of approval on my effort to avoid being punished for murder.

I tested the system to breaking point by standing in front of the police station. They did not recognise me. They did recognise that I had a shotgun equipped and which I had forgotten how to holster using a keyboard. The cops began to shoot me to death. I considered my mission successful.

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