DayZ Player Sings (And Plays Guitar) For His Life

What could’ve been just another blood-soaked tale of DayZ douchebaggery turned into something, well, kinda beautiful.

In this DayZ video from Michael Gramlin, a player is taken hostage with all the traditional fixings—bag over his head, tied up, surrounded, and marinated in a baste of his own sweat and urine—with zero hope of escape. But then his captors make a request:

“If you want to survive, we just need you to sing us a song. Any song. If you don’t comply, we’ll execute you.”

Then a brief moment of silence from the player, possible uncertainty. His captors tell him it can’t be anything easy. No happy birthdays or what have you.

“No, no, no, I’ve got one,” he replies. More skepticism from his captors. “Nah, just… just stay put,” he adds, so calm you’d think he just woke up from the world’s greatest nap.

That’s when he picks up an actual guitar—in real life—and starts strumming. He proceeds to play and sing an absolutely gorgeous, not to mention fitting, rendition of “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” by Dave Van Ronk. Everyone else stops aiming their guns at him, puts their hands up, and slowly sways back and forth in time with the music.

The whole moment is… wonderful. It’s so fucking cool.

As players struggle to believe it even happened, they promise the guy they’re definitely not gonna execute him after all of that. And that’s it. He’s free to go. DayZ may bring out the worst in people sometimes, but when it delivers, goddamn does it ever deliver.

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