Viral clip makes you feel as if you’re controlling an RPG character.
YouTubers tend to get a bad wrap sometimes, especially when they’ve been caught crossing the intersection inside a giant inflatable ball or sleeping on a bed in the middle of Shibuya Scramble Crossing.
Sometimes, though, YouTubers wow the world with creative videos that get everyone talking, and that’s what Komazawa Isolation did this week, with a clip called “What Happens in Video Games Grand Theft Gotoku Solid – The Shibuya Edit Chapter One / Video game moments in real life Shibuya story”.
The “Grand Theft Gotoku Solid” part of the title is a nod to Grand Theft Auto, Ryu ga Gotoku (known as ‘Yakuza‘ in the West) and Metal Gear Solid, with a number of classic motifs from these role-playing games perfectly recreated in the video.
Filmed around Shibuya Station in the wee hours of the morning after the city’s trains had stopped running for the day, the shuttered doors and quiet streets add to the game-like setting. However, it’s the YouTuber’s jerky, stilted movements that have everyone applauding, as they make him look like a character that’s escaped from the 2-D world out onto the streets of Tokyo.
Take a look at the video below:
The video starts with the lead character waking up to find himself at Shibuya, saying: “Is this…Shibuya? I was out on a date with my girlfriend when I witnessed the criminal transactions of some shady men. First, let’s look for clues.”
That’s when the character steps away from the shutter and towards the screen, arms rounded out at the sides and with the body gently bopping up and down to resemble the breathing, ready-to-respond-to-action movements of a video game character.
▼ The current task appears at the top right of the screen: “Find clues”
It’s not only the visuals but the audio that’s been perfectly replicated here, with the voice-over, background city noises and the sound of the character’s footsteps closely resembling those you’d hear in a video game. Our hero then picks up his heels and runs, just like a 2-D character, turning left not far from the police box at the real-world Shibuya Scramble Crossing, where officers simply watch the action as it unfolds.
The famous scramble crossing appears for a moment — as the protagonist bumps into a ‘bystander’ who turns and raises a hand in disapproval as if he’s in a video game — and then it disappears as the lead character runs around a corner, doing that weird run characters do when they encounter an obstacle in their path.
▼ Just keep running at the obstacle face-on until you eventually run past it.
Then the famous Hachiko statue draws attention with a light alerting the player to head towards it, and once there an “Investigate” pops up with the circle button icon prompt. Upon investigation, the text at the top right of the screen changes to “You have acquired the locker key“.
As any gamer knows, sometimes it’s worth checking these places again to see if there are any more goodies in store, and that’s what happens here as the ‘player’ controlling the visuals/action investigates the statue once more, prompting a replay of the previous scene. Coming up empty, it’s time to move on to find those lockers, but not before picking up something on the ground and equipping yourself with it.
▼ Equip…hat!
The player/camera then pans around to view the character’s face — haven’t we all done this at some point? — and the deadpan expression makes us question whether this is a real, live human being or not. It’s then time to ditch the hat, stop to look at a vending machine — which we’re told isn’t necessary right now — and then open up that locker!
▼ Opening the locker gets you 2,000 yen, a handgun, and a red shirt.
The action then continues with a shooting and a new mission to “follow the mystery man” before the protagonist quickly meets his demise, getting “wasted” like a character from GTA. A replay, however, proves more successful — aided by a box à la Snake in Metal Gear — before a showdown in Shibuya Chuo Gai, which looks a little like Yakuza’s Kamurocho.
After an impressive series of jerky, game-like fight moves, our protagonist befriends a defeated fighter and the promise of a new video appears with the text, “To be continued in Chapter Two”. We can’t wait to see what adventures await us in the next chapter of the Shibuya Edit, and it looks like we won’t have to wait too long, as the YouTuber says the new video will be uploaded in the next few days.
So until then, you might want to enjoy this story about the foreign tourist who visited Tokyo looking to meet yakuza from the Yakuza video game. Coming across this YouTuber and his friends in the middle of the night would’ve made his dreams come true!
Source: YouTube/駒沢アイソレーション via Hachima Kiko
Images: YouTube/駒沢アイソレーション
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