A former Grand Theft Auto lead has decided to play mythbusters for a day and reveal that San Andreas' mysterious "Suicidal Pedestrians" aren't suicidal after all - they just didn't realize there was a massive body of water between them and their destination.
For years, players have theorized about the GTA San Andreas NPCs who sometimes spawn, complete whatever purpose they've been programmed for, and simply, errr, give up. The most infamous instance of this is a photographer who appears, takes some pictures of the game's lush skyline, and then peacefully walks into the ocean. (There's a whole wiki entry on the game's Suicidal Pedestrians.)
Many believed that the phenomenon was down to either a pathfinding error or a scrapped bridge that was at one time in the game but removed shortly before release. The theory was that NPCs didn't recognize that the bridge was no longer there - they only know what Rockstar tells 'em - hence all the drowning.
But the developer's former technical lead, Obbe Vermeij, recently responded to a fan query about the subject, explaining that, as far as he remembers, a bridge never existed on the shore in Flint County.
"I don't think there was a bridge there," Vermeij tweeted. "Sometimes the scripts would create special characters. These [pedestrians] would run a little program (i.e. there's a photographer taking pictures) and when done would head for the nearest ped node and start wandering. Sometimes the nearest ped node is on the other side of a body of water and the drowning happens."
