New information about GTA Online has been released on Rockstar’s official blog ahead of its release later today. First and perhaps most importantly to a number of gamers is the release time. GTA Online will be made live through a title update that will be downloadable on PSN and Xbox Live starting at 7am Eastern Time (12 noon GMT), the morning of October 1st. The update will be free for any owners of GTA V and will enable the forth slot on the character switch wheel, this slot will be enable access to GTA Online for owners of GTA V. When you enter GTA Online for the first time a short cutscene will play followed by GTA Online’s hereditary based character creation system.
In GTA Online’s character creator, rather than the usual selection of sliders and options you may expect from a character creator, you select your gender and then your characters parents. After selecting the parents you will move sliders left and right to decide on the dominance of genes between your parents DNA. This creates you a much more unique character and will create a lot more variance in GTA Online characters. As far as GTA Online’s storyline, it takes place a few months prior to the events of GTA V’s single player campaign.
As far as home’s and garage’s are concerned the ability to “grief” other players has been kept to a minimum. With players only being able to enter another players home with an invite from the player in question. If you are invited into another players property, the game will treat it as a social visit and you will be unable to withdraw weapons or steal vehicles. If you own the same property as another player in your server you will still be able to access both yours and your friends property, yours normally and your friends via invite.
Addressing the micro-transactions available in GTA Online which were discovered last week, steps have been taken to ensure that players are not unevenly matched to each other. For example, even if you purchase more in game cash, you will still need to have the required Reputation Points to purchase higher-end items, something which can only be earned through playing. Rockstar have intended for the experience to always be fun and never feel like a grind, something which is aided by the upgrades that Rockstar intend to continuously release, with help from any community feedback they receive.
Are you excited for the launch of GTA Online later today? Will you be playing it for the foreseeable future? Let us know your thoughts on GTA Online and GTA V in the comments below.
