It had all started back in January, when Rockstar approached me with a pitch.
They were working on a new GTA Online expansion.
The title was Vinewood Empire.
Vinewood, of course, was what Hollywood was called in the GTA universe. The expansion was centered around the film industry, celebrity culture, studio politics, and the dark underbelly of Hollywood.
The story would bring back Michael De Santa, one of the three protagonists from the main game, now trying to become a legitimate producer at Richards Majestic. The player would join forces with Michael and a GTA-fied version of me, Daniel Adler, to recover a stolen hard drive containing sensitive material before it could be ransomed or leaked by an anti-Hollywood piracy collective calling themselves Obsidian.
When they pitched it to me, of course I said yes.
How could I not?
It sounded fun.
I used to play GTA Online with Matt and John all the time until about two years ago, and it was the most fun we had in all the games we played together.
So when Rockstar came to me and basically said, "Do you want to play a satirical version of yourself in GTA?" my answer had been immediate.
I had done my first face-capture session three months ago, along with some motion-capture scenes with Ned Luke, who played Michael in the game. It had been weird as hell then, and it was still weird as hell now.
I stood in the middle of a large white room wearing a motion-capture suit covered in little markers while people adjusted the balls around me.
Sensors surrounded the space. Cameras were mounted everywhere. The floor was marked with tape, props, and little objects that were supposed to represent much cooler things later. A blue foam stick in the corner was apparently going to become a baseball bat once the developers did their thing.
We had a state-of-the-art studio like this at Arcanum as well, since we were now making both the Game of Thrones game and beginning production on the Cyberpunk 2077 game.
Rockstar's studio was located in San Diego. They had one in New York too, but this was the closest one to me, so I was here.
The history of the games Rockstar released was different from what I remembered. The GTA games were all the same, but instead of Red Dead, they had a completely different cowboy-themed game, which made me want to do something with the Red Dead Redemption plot I remembered from my previous life. I could make it a series, or even a novel.
"So this is the end of the questline," the director said. "The player has found Obsidian's leader, recovered the drive, and brought him here. Michael is there. Ava is next to you. The player character brings him to his knees. You're calm at first, then you lose your temper when he accuses you of stealing from him."
"Right," I said.
"And then you ask for the baseball bat."
I looked over at the blue foam stick.
"And, you know..."
I smiled.
"I'm glad I had you guys write this scene in."
The director laughed. "I figured you would enjoy it."
"You figured correctly."
Before we moved into position, he glanced toward one of the monitors set up near the side of the room.
"Actually, before we start, do you want to see what we made from the last session?"
I looked at him. "Oh, it's done already?"
"No, no," he said quickly. "Not done. Very not done. But some of the higher-ups thought you might like to see it, so we put together a half-finished version."
I turned toward the monitor immediately.
"I would love to see it."
Ned Luke walked over with me, stretching his arms as one of the Rockstar guys pulled up the scene. A few others gathered around as well, clearly curious to see my reaction.
The scene began.
The player character arrived at the Los Santos Golf Club clubhouse.
Michael De Santa waited near the clubhouse entrance.
The player approached.
Michael turned and started walking.
"You know what this place actually is?" Michael said as they crossed the perfect green toward the fourth hole. "It's not a golf club. It's a conference room that somebody accidentally put grass on."
"Every deal in this town, movies, streaming rights, studio mergers, prenups, lawsuits, award campaigns, all of it, gets done out here. Nobody actually likes golf. They just need something to look at while they talk money."
Michael and the player reached the fourth hole.
And there I was.
Well, a half-finished, low-polygon version of me. All the others were finished because they were already in the game. I was not. The face was there, sort of. The hair was there. The expression was close. But the textures were unfinished, so I looked like I had been sculpted out of expensive wax.
Standing beside me were two women and Solomon Richards.
As the player and Michael walked in, my character was standing very close behind one of the women, holding her back and hand as I taught her how to swing a golf club. Doing the mocap for this scene had been very awkward, but then again, I had a good acting teacher in my fiancée.
My character was laughing. The woman swung badly, missed the ball completely, and then turned around, grinning. Then, because this was GTA, she started twerking against my character's groin in the middle of the golf course.
I burst out laughing, as did most of the people around me.
On screen, Michael walked up with the player.
"Daniel," Michael said.
My low-poly self turned around, still holding the golf club.
"Michael."
The two shook hands.
Michael gestured to the player.
"This is the guy I told you about."
My character looked the player up and down.
"The quiet type, then."
Michael shrugged. "Best kind of professional."
"I could have handled this myself, but Michael here says you're the best person for the matter."
Just then, two other golfers approached from behind.
One of them looked annoyed.
"Excuse me. We need to play through."
My character slowly turned his head.
The man continued, oblivious. "This is a members' course. There's a pace-of-play policy."
My character stared at him. "I know all about it. I funded the renovation of this clubhouse last year. There's a fucking plaque with my name at the entrance."
His friend stepped forward, trying to look important.
"My wife is very close with the course director. We could have your membership reviewed."
My character's face changed. Even in unfinished animation, I could see the motion capture coming through.
"I know your wife is close with the director," my character said. "Because she's fucking him."
"How do I know this?" my character continued. "Because I FUCKED her first."
Both golfers were furious now.
"We'll have you thrown out of this club."
The scene continued as they left, and my character told the player what had happened.
"I have been robbed," my character said. "A private drive. It contains material from the movie Solomon, Michael, and I are making."
My character looked at the woman beside him.
"And some personal material."
Michael rubbed his forehead.
My character continued. "The people who took it call themselves Obsidian. Anti-Hollywood, anti-corporate, anti-fun, anti-showering, probably. They want money, attention, and the pleasure of telling themselves they're revolutionaries instead of the limp-dicked criminals they are. Those pathetic, cum-guzzling, shit-for-brains, ass-fucking, piss-drinking, motherfucking keyboard warriors can take their fake-ass revolution and shove it straight up their crusty, unwashed assholes..."
Michael interrupted my tirade and told the player how important this was. They needed his help.
It ended there. I knew from the rest of the scene we had done that I tasked the player with taking care of the two golfers who interrupted them to prove how useful he was.
I stared at it for a few seconds.
Then I started laughing.
"That's great."
The director looked relieved. "So, can we begin now? Are you ready, Daniel?"
"Yeah. Let's do it."
===========
Ned walked past me, already in character mode, rolling his shoulders.
"You ready for this, kid?" he asked.
I looked at him. "Hope it won't take as long as last time."
He shook his head. "Damn it, kid. You jinxed it."
He laughed and moved into position.
We began.
The scene began with the player character dragging the Obsidian leader into the room and throwing him down onto his knees.
I stood near the center of the room with Michael and three others around me.
In the final game, it would take place in some abandoned part of town. That was what I was told to imagine.
Ned stepped forward as Michael.
"This is the guy?" Michael said, looking down at the kneeling man. "This is the leader of Obsidian?"
The actor playing the Obsidian leader lifted his head.
"You're all dead," he spat.
He looked at me with pure hatred.
"You."
I tilted my head.
"Me?"
We did not get much further on the first take.
Mostly because I laughed.
The problem was that the whole thing was too funny for me to do with a straight face. I had trouble doing it last time too.
We reset.
The scene moved through a few more exchanges, with the Obsidian leader ranting about art, corruption, studios, celebrities, and how people like me turned every human experience into content.
Eventually, we reached the moment.
I looked to the woman beside me.
"Give me the bat, baby."
The actress stepped forward and handed me the blue foam stick.
It was very hard not to laugh.
In the final game, it would be a baseball bat.
Right now, it was blue foam.
I took it, rolled my shoulders, and looked down at the man kneeling in front of me.
He smiled up at me.
"You won't do it."
I tapped the foam stick against my palm. "You know, people always say that right before someone does it."
Then I swung and acted like I was laying into him, and soon we were done with it all.
"That's it. We got it."
There was applause around the room.
Ned walked over and shook my hand.
"Nice work."
"Thanks for the patience," I said. "I know I made this take longer than it needed to."
He waved it off.
"You know how it is. Happens to all of us."
The GTA-fied version of me was basically the person many of my haters already believed I was.
Arrogant. Controlling. Petty. Hedonistic.
That was one of the reasons I had agreed to do it.
And one of the reasons I had asked Rockstar to change the character a bit. Originally, their version of me had been a little too flattering. Too clean. Yeah, he was GTA-fied in a way, but not too much.
So I told them to make me worse.
A satire of what the internet thought I was.
I wondered how the conspiracy crowd was going to react when they saw it. Half of them would think I was mocking them. The other half would probably think I was confessing through parody, because apparently that was how their brains worked.
We continued shooting over the next two days, and honestly, the whole thing was a good break.
Recently, my life had been completely focused on post-production for The Usual Suspects. This was a good change to refresh the brain a bit.
Now it was time to go back to it, but first I had to fly to New York.
I was going to be on The Tonight Show.
Season 2 of Game of Thrones was coming out in a few weeks. A few months after that, the next ASOIAF book, After the Feast, would release as well.
So it was time to do some promotion from the author himself.
.
.
.