The latest victim of weird (and sometimes downright terrifying) GTA San Andreas CJ mods movement is Stray, the newly released puzzle platformer featuring a really cute cat. Well, at least this cat's not cute anymore with this mod.
stray trailer screencap
A PC modder who goes by the name Sirgalahad172 has created a mod for Stray's titular furry character, replacing the cat with CJ from GTA SA. According to Kotaku, the mod creator says that the mod itself is "intended as a joke," since the iconic GTA character "needs to be modded in any game that exists XD."
The mod is already available in Nexus Mods as part of Stray's mods list, if you want to check it out. Installing it is quite simple, as written in the mod's description on Nexus. Here it is in gameplay:
The only problem with this mod (aside from the fact that you'd even want to install it, you sick monster) is that the 3 companion cats in the beginning are "broken." According to the modder, they never work right with the mod installed as they all share a single cat model throughout the entire game, for some reason. And by broken, it means that the 3 cats don't even appear.
Either way, the result is just downright terrifying. Tell us that it isn't after seeing the gameplay video above. Come on. The joke mod is just all in good fun, though, as it is part of the litany of mods of PC games that have seen the GTA SA character replace their main characters - again all created as jokes.
It also is proof that even if the game itself is small, Stray has been getting a few mods lately that just allows cat lovers to roleplay a bit more. As per the official Stray mods page on Nexus, much of them feature model replacers for different breeds of cats. You can replace the main cat breed with a Siamese cat, a white tabby cat, or even a hairless Sphynx cat if you want to.
Aside from the cat model replacers, Stray mods also feature a few other visual and gameplay enhancements. Perhaps the most interesting are a few reshade mods that make the game far more realistic-looking, and a replacer for the game's unreadable tech-like script with readable Latin letters.
Stray is out now for the PS4, PS5, and PC via Steam worldwide.
Read also: RUMOR: Someone Might Be Making A Black Panther Game
Why?!
The real question to be asked with this Stray mod here is, despite how horrifying it looks, is why not? That's really what separates PC gaming from console gaming: the ability for the community to modify and play the games they like however they want. Stray being on PC is no exception, and as such is the latest of several games to have the iconic GTA character in it - whether intended or not.
One great example is the 2018 God Of War, the former PlayStation exclusive which only recently came to PC after spending decades on Sony's consoles. Here is the mod taking CJ's original low-poly, mid-2000s look and making it replace Kratos' new, much higher-fidelity look in GoW:
As you can see, CJ looks SO out of place in Santa Monica's Norse epic. But that's the point of PC gaming, as modders would say: the freedom to do what you want. Stray is no exception.
Related: Stray Review: Simplicity Is Beauty