I never got intoGTA Online. If you haven’t been there from the beginning, you have to brave servers filled with kids who have far too much free time, hoarding enough money to buy the most absurd weapons and vehicles, all with one motive - killing randoms. That means killing you. You’re essentially an NPC, a hapless bystander caught in the carnage of the player character. Nobody wants to be the NPC.
Because I’m a bit of a weirdo, I did put a few hundred hours into GTA 4 Online, that famous mode everyone loved. I even played it on PC, meaning I had to push through Games for Windows Live.
I got into GTA 5 a couple of years later. I wasn’t all aboard the hype train at launch, only watching a few Yogscast let’s plays—yes, I’m a child, let’s move on. With GTA 6, things are different. I’ve got an opportunity to be there from day one and carve out a character in the online scene - maybe I’ll get my own nuclear-powered hoverbike this time.
It feels risky to be excited about a mode with such an unclear future as GTA Online. We know nothing about what shape it will take in a post-GTA-6 world, but we can hazard a guess.It’ll take place in Vice City, likely start us fresh without any progression carrying over, and feature a lot of heists, races, and minigames. The usual.
A fresh start seems inevitable for a couple of reasons - the cynic in me knows Rockstar wants to peddle as many Shark Cards as it can, and that’s easier to do if people don’t have in-game money anymore. But it also makes GTA 6 Online more welcoming and easier to balance without being beholden to a game from over a decade ago.
I know because I don’t spend all my waking hours gaming that school kids will surpass me in the first week anyway and I’ll be back to square one, but getting your foot in the door from go is a lot easier than trying years later wheneveryoneis a rich billionaire with all the gadgets to match. Imagine Gotham City if everyone but you was Batman. Hard pass.
This is not even to mention that PC, which is where I used to play, isfilled to the brim with hackers. When I finally bought my own home, I got blown up inside of it. Luckily, I’ve become a console gamer since then, so I’ll probably not run into any hackers this time… unless I just jinxed it.
Rockstar will have hopefully learned from the past decade of GTA Online and might just, fingers crossed, figure out how to make servers a little less intense. Maybe there’ll be improved matchmaking this time so you’re not paired with those who have thousands of hours, or maybe they’ll simply let us play in private servers without disabling half of the useful features.
The reality is that I’ll probably get annoyed after a couple of weeks and call it quits, but seeing all the custom cars lining fancy garages with arsenals that would makeJames Bondblush has me itching to push forward. I never got past the starter apartment, cheap car, standard weaponry phase, forever left as a low-level wading in an ocean of tryhards.
A new beginning would put us all in the same boat, and even a few days of getting to experience GTA Online on a level playing field is an exciting prospect. Just please, leave the Oppressor behind.
