The tough life of an urban coyote in GTA 5
Wily Coyote
Until GTA 5 mods let us fly around in Superman's tights or smash like Hulk, we're left to find other, simpler distractions. Personally, I decided to leave the crime, corruption, and human conflict of Los Santos behind and live the simple life as a coyote on Mount Chiliad. What could possibly go wrong?
Jack rabbit
What do coyotes spend their time doing? Hunting for food, I imagine. I begin by chasing down rabbits. While I can't technically eat them, I can kill them, which amounts to a successful meal in my mind. It's fun enough for a while, but I grow hungry for bigger game.
Oh deer
Deer are tougher. They're much faster than I am, and they spot me coming a mile away. Luckily, I'm a resourceful coyote, so I come up with the idea of using GTA 5's terrible human drivers to my advantage, chasing deer into the roads and hoping they get hit. A couple do, but eventually, so do I.
Chicken run
The local medical center patches me up, but instead of responsibly releasing me back into the wild, they just let me out the front door. I guess I'm an urban coyote now. There's still food to be found, though. Someone is raising chickens, and seeing as coyotes are the biggest livestock predators in North America, I quickly live up to my reputation.
Morning jolt
I eventually discover another source of nourishment: humans. Not eating them, but making them feed me. While running around, I accidentally startle a woman carrying a coffee and she drops it. And so a new game is born: scaring people into dropping their food.
Lunch date
This is way more fun than trying to get deer hit by cars. Slinking around alleyways, lurking behind buildings, stalking people carrying food, and then leaping out and getting them to drop their bagels for me.
Yes this is coyote
I'm becoming quite the urban creature. Even got a phone, though it looks a little weird when I use it. Also, I can't talk.
Friend in need
Of course, nourishment isn't the only thing I'm hungry for. A little companionshiop would be nice. I find a dog on a porch, and try to push some crates over so I can climb up and hang out with him. It doesn't work. Eh, whatever. He looks like a grinning idiot anyway.
Stomp and circumstance
Befriending people is even harder. This guy outside a bar grows enraged at my presence and stomps me to death. I wasn't even trying to startle him into dropping a sandwich. I was just trying to chill with him.
ACME pistol
I try again with some other people, and one guy gets so mad he draws a gun and shoots me to death. Don't these people understand what a town mascot is? Sure, I scare people into dropping their lunches, but it's cute! It'd be a nice fluff piece on the local news, for sure.
Rain on my parade
No one loves coyote.
Get your war on
Another guy kicks me to death, and I decide I've had enough. The humans want a war? I'll give them a war. I slink to the beach and kill two guys standing by a truck. It feels good. Liberating. No more bagels for coyote. I'm hungry for blood. I kill another dude, this time right in town. Someone calls the cops. This just got real.
I fought the law
Two cruisers pull up, and the officers start shouting at me to put my hands up—sort of an odd request. A driver passing by panics, jams on the gas pedal, misses me by an inch and smashes one of the cops into oblivion. Drivers: a coyote's best weapon. One down, infinity more to go.
The law won
That's all the rest need to start firing. Bullets ping off the ground as I circle them, but I take a few rounds and drop into a bloody, hairy heap. The lesson? Even a harmless, bagel-loving coyote can't stay out of trouble for long in GTA 5.
Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.