By now you may have had your fill of heists, shootouts, and wanton destruction in Grand Theft Auto 5, and maybe you're looking to change things up a bit with other activities. The Firefighter mod lets you continue the fun of driving at top speeds, but rather than hurting the citizens of Los Santos, you can actually start helping them.
Activating the mod teleports you to a firestation, either in Sandy Shores or Paleto Bay (a station in the city is planned for the future), and dresses you in firefighting gear. You can choose to be a fireman, who gets to drive the fire engine around, or the battalion chief, who cruises around in a red Granger SUV.
Then, it's just a matter of waiting for a call or using a key to prompt one. If it's a fire, the location is marked on your minimap and you're given a route. Once you've arrived, sirens blaring, you hop out of your vehicle and grab an extinguisher from your truck, or use your truck's own sprayer. Fires can be in stores and residences, on the side of the road, and sometimes even cars will be going up in flames. Get busy dousing the blaze, and watch out for explosions from gas cans and fuel tanks.
You can also respond to citizens who are having medical emergencies. Once you've located them on your map—they're typically face down on the ground—move beside them and press Z to administer CPR.
It make take a while, and require a few attempts at CPR, but there's a chance you can save the citizen's life, at which point they'll pop up and walk away. (The guy in the image above got to his feet, immediately took out his phone, and started talking as if he hadn't just been pulled back from the brink of death by a heroic firefighter.) Other times, they'll be too far gone to save, just another casualty of too many meals at Burger Shot.
The mod is still in its infancy and there are a few things that don't quite work yet. When a fire has been put out, you have to manually end the mission, it won't simply detect that you're done. You can respond to auto accidents, though even pulling people out of the cars (by getting into them yourself) doesn't seem to let you try to revive them. Sometimes NPCs react with hostility if you use your fire extinguisher: they don't attack you, they just get mad and swear at you. You can use the 'evacuate area' function to get them to run away if they're bothersome, though.
Still, it is oddly fun racing to fires and trying to revive people. It went terribly for me once: while trying to put out a car fire with the sprayer on my fire engine, the car exploded, which then caught my own truck on fire. That was embarrassing, especially when another fire truck showed up to deal with it.
The modder is still adding to and improving the mod, so keep an eye on it to see what develops. The control scheme is outlined in the readme file contained in the download, and there's an instructional video to help you get it set up. You'll need Alexander Blade's ScriptHook, which comes with the asi loader, and you'll need the Community ScriptHook as well.
Take-Two CEO says Grand Theft Auto 6 is on track for 'fall' next year, GTA 5 has sold over 205 million, and 'PC will be more and more a part of [our] business going forward'
GTA 6's corporate overlord reveals that he's looking forward to 'a more sensible FTC' under the Trump administration because sometimes 'deregulation can be a positive'
