‘GTA V’ Online Heists Coming ‘Early 2015′ For All Platforms

It’s been more than a year since Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online released, yet the highly requested implementation of online heists are still missing from the game. Over the year we’ve gone from hearing next to nothing about it; being told it’s coming soon, then learning it’ll come in an update after the current-gen versions release. Contrary to the hopes of a late December release due to a rumor of the content’s date, however, eager GTA Online players will have to wait until 2015 for the online heists. Specifically, ‘early 2015.’ The teasing (and lengthy waiting) continues.

Fortunately, as seen above, Rockstar Games has introduced a brand new trailer for the multiplayer feature that may or may not hold people over until next year. Also, as it turns out, the heists are a four-player co-op mode, with one person as the leader and the other playing simple crew members. The player in the leader role is tasked with recruiting other players, assigning roles, picking appropriate heisting outfits and the like, while the other members just have to show up, do their job correctly, and make it to “each Heist’s epic finale.”

Although, if typical heist rules apply, an individual’s cut of the money will increase when team members are lost.

At launch, there will be five separate heists, comprised of at least 20 missions. Heists will, of course, be replayable, allowing players to try out the different roles and maybe, just maybe, understand what it’s like to be the getaway driver.

Speaking to IGN, GTA Online producer and lead mission designer Imran Sarwar explained that the long wait for online heists was because the task required much more than Rockstar anticipated:

“Our initial idea was to build on the concept of Story Mode heists to make a new gameplay experience for GTA Online that was more focused on cooperation, where everyone could play to their individual strengths and feel like they had a stake in the outcome. One of the challenges is that unlike a heist in Story Mode, every player needs to feel central to the action at all times, and that’s much more challenging than it appears.

“After many months of designing, testing, rewriting and re-testing, we settled on the four-player structure that you will experience in the game. It took a ton of work from our programmers and mission designers to make it work at the level we were happy with.”

With regards to what’s next for GTA V and GTA Online, Sarwar stated that the goal now is to release the heists and see what people think of them. If there’s one thing the GTA community won’t fall behind one, it’s letting Rockstar hear their opinions. So expect those heists to be blown wide open when they debut next year, and patched/balanced shortly afterwards.

After all this time, are you still eager to play online heists will three other players? Or are you all GTA’d out? Perhaps this GTA V stunt montage will pull you back in.

Grand Theft Auto V is out now for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The PC release is still scheduled for January 27, 2015.

Sources: Rockstar Newswire, IGN

‘GTA V’ Online Heists Coming ‘Early 2015′ For All Platforms