You may have already seen this viral video of Red Dead Redemption 2 a mod created by a Twitch streamer in which the game forces the player to watch an NPC’s story if and when it dies. That in itself is brilliant enough. But what really caught people’s attention was the fact that the NPC stories were written by the streamer’s Twitch viewers – and the results were absurd. But these antics go far beyond a quick clip on social media. Polygon spoke to the mod’s creator to find out where the mod came from and what has happened since the first clip saw the airy of day.
In case you missed the initial video that went viral on social media sites like Reddit and X, here’s where it all started. In it, Twitch streamer Blurbs shoots an NPC in the head, but the game suddenly turns into a cutscene. It turns out that the victim is a man who dreams of adventure, the father of a newborn, a dog owner and a war veteran. These details are not so much heartbreaking as they provide a background for absurdity. An NPC tries to get his newborn to speak dog-talk and brainwash him into liking a particular baseball team. But the idea proved irresistible to online commenters. “This is truly amazing, it’s like you invented a new mechanic,” the Redditor wrote.
In real life, Blurbs is a former streaming engineer of five years. He has spent the last year researching mod development, much like he has been doing lately Red Dead Redemption 2 creation where players can only employ their Deadeye ability to shoot NPCs in the groin. Blurbs has a long-running series where viewers suggest terrible mods to create, and he does everything in his power to bring those ideas to life. In Skyrim iterationfor example, he created mods that made the player’s butt bigger every time he crouched, and another where each NPC follows the player and tries to talk to them. Typically, these suggestions are placed in videos summarizing various terrible ideas. However, the idea of giving NPCs stories written specifically to make the player feel bad was good enough to focus on it completely. What went viral is just a minute of the 13-minute video:
To create the NPC story mod, he created a chatbot that allowed viewers to type scripts directly into Twitch. You might think that giving viewers the reins would be playing with fire, but Twitch’s extensive modding filters assist keep things frosty. It was more complex to put together the actual scenes. Blurbs says he worked with viewers to figure out what they would be, but he had to put them together by hand. This design also imposed some restrictions on the gameplay when using this mod. Blurbs says he had to find a good spot to spawn the required pre-written NPCs, had to frame the camera in the right spot and dig around Rdr2extensive animation libraries to find the exact movements needed to bring certain scenes to life.
“It was extremely boring and I actually wanted more scenes, but I couldn’t bring myself to do more than I ended up doing (about 6),” he told Blurbs via email. The longer video shows part of this process. You can see code intro credits to adjust values, such as how the game handles zooming to make sure flashbacks are framed in a cinematic setting. Think of the VAT system in Fallout, except that it only activates After you kill the NPC. It also changes the gameplay to black and white, adding drama.
It’s as fun to create as the final product. For example, at one point during the game’s development, a test flashback appears showing a headless version of an NPC that has just been killed because Blurbs has just blown off its dome. In another segment, when Blurbs was experimenting with including babies, the challenge was just getting the little one in the right place. The digital bundle of joy had a knack for floating and appearing in strange places. Blurbs also spent some time experimenting with modifying the animals in these scenes, which unfortunately often ends up spoiling the proceedings. It turns out that bears won’t rest just because you remember a wonderful wedding. It’s worth watching the whole thing to see how much work went into the minute of footage that went viral, and to see which scenes weren’t cut.
You’d think that adopting a flashback mod would make Blurbs double down on this idea, but nope. “When a video appears on YouTube, we immediately start working on the next terrible mod,” Blurbs said. “The reception to the video was amazing.”
If you liked any of these, I’d give it to you Twitch Follower Blurbs Or YouTube. This man creates content worth its weight in gold, and yet he averages less than 100 viewers per stream despite the millions of people who watched his Red Dead Redemption clip.
