Last week, the time finally came for Grand Theft Auto 5’s Online feature to include the long anticipated multiplayer Heists. This consisted of 5 different Missions, with multiple sections of setups and finale’s, for 2 to 4 players to work together to get big bucks. It’s been just over a week since this gigantic free update has dropped, but the question is, how did it turn out? Was it worth the wait or did it just blow away in the wind?
If you’ve logged into GTA Online lately, you may have some indication of how the initial reaction is. If you haven’t for a while, this is how a new session tends to go. Immediately upon entering the game, you get a brand new pop-up that came out of the update. “You have new daily objectives available.” When you open your Quick Inventory and check these out, you then see three different objectives to complete for a day. If you complete all three in a day, you get an immediate cash and RP (experience) injection. Continue to do this for a week or a month, and you get a larger amount. This simple change not only encourages you to do a lot of different things, such as races, deathmatches, missions, wheelies on motorcycles, flying under bridges, and basically anything and everything you could possibly do in the game, but it keeps the game fresh. It means cash isn’t that far away. You don’t have to spend countless hours grinding different missions, or losing races in hopes that one of them will come first. It’s under your control a lot more. The variety is amazing, and every day there’s something different for you to try.
The second thing you’ll see when you log in is a spam of invites from random players to each section of one of the heists. So people are wanting to do heists. A lot. At times there can be 40+ Job Invites sitting on your phone, and by the looks of it people love to just jump in and see what cut then can get in a random game. But that comes later. Let’s talk about how the heists themselves work.
Soon, you get a call from Lester, and he explains that there may be a job for you. If you have a high end apartment, some guys will be sent and spruce up the play a little. The Heist Room is in full effect, and the board you see in these apartments will be key to choosing not only which set up mission to undertake, but how much cash each member of your crew will get. You go here to activate each heist. Besides from the first, if you’re setting up the heist as a leader, you pay in an amount. This is to cover the set up costs. Luckily, Lester is generous enough to cover this for your first time. A small bank job for you and one other friend.
To avoid going into much details, you have a couple of quick set up missions to procure equipment, you go in, and you get out. You get the pay and then you unlock the next heist. The great thing about each of these missions is that if any new vehicle appears during the heist, you unlock it for purchase after you’ve experienced it. These come fast and furious, from armoured sports cars to attack choppers. Going in on Hard, which gives you more cash and RP much like standard missions, means that if anyone on your team dies, you’re reset to a checkpoint. Patience is key, and having people you can rely on is really helpful. At the end of each stage, you’re awarded with Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze medals, depending on how vital your role and how well you did in the game. While this doesn’t affect your money at the end, it does give you a boost in RP if you do grab one of the top medals.
After each Heist Finale is completed, you then have to wait for Lester to call you to inform you about the next Heist. This can, unfortunately, take a while, but it does give you the opportunity to spend your take on the new toys. There’s even a huge amount of new clothing, and they’re all awesome. Whether it be the plethora of new masks, or combat gear, you can further customize your character to exactly how you want. They’eve even added the ability to save your own outfits, so you can change on the fly to suit whatever situation you find yourself in. There’s a lot to spend the big bucks on, and there’s a great opportunity for huge payouts if you’re willing to forgo those spams of invites.
The Heists have multiple challenges attached to them. Each Finale of the Heist, which is basically the heists themselves, have an Elite Challenge, which usually comes down to finishing quickly with as little damage as possible. The biggest bonuses come in the form of three separate challenges that cover all five Heists. The first, completing them all in order, will award you with $1 million. The second, for another $1 million, requires you to finish all Heists in order with the same crew member. The final is to do all in order, with the same crew, without dying in any Set Up or Finale mission. This final challenge gives you the final one off bonus of $10 million. It’s a high order, but considering the payout, it basically means you can immediately purchase almost anything and everything you could possibly want in the game.
These challenges give you a huge incentive to replay them all. And the quality of each mission is high. Though the 4th Heist itself, named Series A, did hit a bit of a dull point for my crew and I personally, fun was had the entire time throughout each of them. They all take a lot of thought, cooperation and communication to get through, but it’s all the worth it to get the payout at the end of each finale.
The fact that this was free also makes it all the sweeter. It’s great to see Rockstar continue to support the Online portion of GTA V. So how can they continue to reward the loyalists who will continue to keep playing, and have been while Heists were still on the burner? Really, it’s simple. Make sure that this isn’t the end of the Heists.
While it’s obvious a lot of work goes into each of the Heists, what with the design of each set up, the voice acting for the cutscenes, the planning for each individual set up and finale. It’s not just any old mission. So having a new set of Heists later on would be an amazing addition to the game. Giving players these new ways to spend a little bit of more time for a higher payout is working so far. There’s been loads of public games I’ve entered and seen people with the more expensive toys, and it makes the experience a lot more interesting, especially if you find one of those people who just shoots any and all players on sight.
So, new Heists are kind of a given in the next update for the game. Maybe even centered around a different theme. There’s also a possibility that we could maybe even set up our OWN heists, rather than do it for a specific person. As much as the “leader” of each heist is in charge of the roles of players and their cut, they don’t choose anything other than that. How about giving us certain locations that we can choose to break into. A bank, a jewelry store, whatever. Give us a couple options of how to go in, much like the single player. Go in loud of go in smart. Then give us generic set up missions to get the equipment necessary. Attack a Merrywheather van, go grab a specific vehicle, invade a gang outpost to steal weapons or equipment. Then go in and take all you can, see if you can getaway with all the money. It wouldn’t be as grand, perhaps, without the cutscenes and the finely tuned level design, but it could be a great addition to the game, giving us criminals all the more freedom in the game.
From now on, no matter what comes in the next update for GTA Online, if there’s not new Heist content, some of us my be a little disappointed. These updates could bring in the next big game mode, new vehicles for us to find and pimp out, and we’d still be asking for more Heists. Then again, doesn’t that just say everything that needs to be said about Heists, doesn’t it? I want more, because I think I just had the most fun in GTA Online than I have had since the servers were first stabilized back at the original launch.
Now, I need to go and prepare for our next run through. We need that cool $10 Million…
//
