Hear Me Out: Gta Online Has Always Worked Best As A Singleplayer...

Hackers and hoverbikes. Ask any GTA Online player to name their biggest gripes roving Los Santos, and I guarantee this pairing gets a name-check. And while Rockstar has spent years attempting to cull cheaters from its chaotic multiplayer spaces (with limited success, it must be said), marshalling griefing sky-bound Pegassi Oppressor Mk II enthusiasts as they rain down mission-spoiling missiles upon hapless server-sharers is a different challenge entirely.

Sure, these guys are an-noy-ing, but being a dick in San Andreas isn't illegal, at least not in the real world. What it is, however, is cause to seek GTA Online's quieter servers, or, better still, its solo spaces that allow you to crack on with your business in relative peace. Which is to say: GTA Online is actually a better game when viewed as a singleplayer experience.

In 2020, at the heart of global quarantine measures, GTA Online launched the Cayo Perico heist—an island set-piece that transported players to a new location for the first time since the game's launch seven years earlier. Heists are, of course, the tentpole of GTA Online's accumulative criminal enterprise, but this one was different: this was the first rob 'em up that could be undertaken on your lonesome.

Fast forward another 12 months, and 2021's The Contract, starring Dr Dre, offered another singleplayer endeavour which, after completing its missions, unlocked Shorts Trips—a series of co-op story missions starring GTA 5's Franklin Clinton and Lamar Davies.

At surface level, Short Trips is fun as a low-impact buddy comedy that reunites two of story mode's most endearing and entertaining characters. Scratch beneath its goofy veneer, though, and you'll discover something more substantial, with Short Trips realising a long-sought after feature ultimately eclipsed by the sprawling success of GTA Online over time: narrative-led DLC that lets you re-assume control of one of Story Mode's key stars. Sure, Short Trips is co-op only, but by putting us back in the shoes of Franklin—and not simply working alongside him while controlling our bespoke GTA Online avatar—we're finally given a glimpse of singleplayer DLC.

You see, despite a slew of free (assuming you own the base game) updates, a vocal and oft-disgruntled section of GTA 5's playerbase has continually bemoaned the absence of singleplayer story DLC; the same treatment received by its forerunner. Before GTA Online hit its stride, in its pre-2015 PC port state, Rockstar once promised so

Source: PC Gamer