A GTA 5 mod where you play as a police officer. Okay, sounds normal. Well how about new, fully designed story missions, where you can actually talk, through a microphone, with your real voice, to the NPCs? This is Rockstar’s sandbox game as you’ve never experienced it before, as a whole-new GTA 5 mod campaign allows you to hold actual, dynamic conversations with in-game characters, crossing the borders between LA Noire’s police officer back-and-forth, Red Dead Redemption 2’s organic social encounters, and, well, what feels like the future. If you’re waiting on the GTA 6 release date, and want to experience something that already seems like the next generation, this GTA 5 mod is for you.
Let’s start with the basics. Sentient Streets is created by ‘Bloc,’ and casts you as a Los Santos police officer. Over the course of three days and several missions, you uncover a criminal conspiracy involving a cult which believes – irony on irony – that Los Santos is all part of a videogame simulation, and that everything is being controlled by an omnipotent, god-like artificial intelligence.
You jump into a patrol car. You cruise the streets and handle a few routine calls, and then eventually, you find yourself in the midst of the cult’s criminal organization. Potentially, this sounds like some mods, fan projects, or maybe GTA RP servers that you’ve played before. But there’s a huge twist.
At the start of Sentient Streets, you are tasked with talking to and selecting a police officer partner. But you don’t talk to them through on-screen dialogue prompts – you use your actual, human, real voice, via your PC’s microphone. And then, thanks to the implementation of a variety of AI systems, they respond. And this goes for every NPC that’s been created for the mod.
For example, during an early callout, you attend the home of a rich young woman in the Vinewood Hills. Somehow, she has managed to crash her car into her own swimming pool. Using – once again – their actual voice, ‘Bloc’ asks the NPC citizen what’s happened.
‘Bloc’ then says, to the NPC, that they won’t report her or take her in if she gives them some money. Responding to the conversation, the NPC offers to give ‘Bloc’ and their partner $1,000. Oh, and on the way out, ‘Bloc’s’ partner – remember, also an NPC – chides them for being corrupt. See it for yourself in the video below.
It seems remarkable. It’s like RP but single-player. Similarly, when ‘Bloc’ attends the first call involving the cultists, they get into an argument about whether an AI could really be governing Los Santos or not. It’s a mind-bending meta upon meta upon meta moment. You can try Sentient Streets for yourself right now.
Alternatively, take a tour through some of the other best and most beautiful open-world games, or maybe try life on the wrong side of the law with the best crime games on PC.