Grand Theft Auto V can be a visual showpiece on a PC at max settings, thanks to its well-realized world and sheer impressive scope. But what if you took all those standout graphical features and made them awful? What nightmarish body horror would ensue? Unfortunately, we now know the answer.
On this episode of Potato Mode, Joey and Rob intentionally muck up the city of Los Santos. The pair start by turning all the graphical settings down as low as possible, but the result is a surprisingly decent-looking version of the game. Not content to accept defeat in their quest to destroy beautiful things, they start editing background files to manually edit the level-of-detail settings. And that's when things get weird.
Now Playing: We Turned GTA 5's Graphics Into Mud | Potato Mode
From N64-like textures and fog to cars disappearing into the ground to character models becoming faceless clay-beasts, this particular tour of the fair city is not for the faint of heart. It all ends up the only place it could end: at a strip club, where the talent has morphed into vaguely human, vaguely naked blobs.
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Steve Watts has loved video games since that magical day he first saw Super Mario Bros. at his cousin's house. He's been writing about games as a passion project since creating his own GeoCities page, and has been reporting, reviewing, and interviewing in a professional capacity for 14 years. He is GameSpot's preeminent expert on Hearthstone, a title no one is particularly fighting him for, but he'll claim it anyway.