With all the hype surrounding the Grand Theft Auto franchise after the release of the GTA VI trailer, more news has come to the attention of fans as it was revealed that there was more to GTA V after all. Unfortunately, these plans never came to fruition.
GTA V DLCs
There have been a lot of leaks due to hackers who seem to be fond of breaching Rockstar Games, but it wasn't until around this Christmas that a hack revealed planned DLCs for GTA 5 that were never released by the studio.
Based on the source code that was published, there were references for expansions in the game such as "Agent Trevor," "Relationship Pack," "Enterprise Pack," "Prologue DLC," "LibertyV DLC," "SP Assassination Pack," "SP Manhunt Pack," and "SP Norman Pack," as per Kokatu.
The leak does not reveal much about what kind of gameplay or story comes with the DLCs, but one could take a guess based on the names. For instance, "Agent Trevor" might have allowed players to take on the role of Trevor.
With the "LibertyV DLC," players could've been taken back to the old map from GTA IV. The "Relationship Pack" might have been interesting as well as the character could build a romantic relationship with another, which could face challenges in a crime-ridden world.
As for why the DLCs never managed to reach development, it's likely due to GTA Online. The game was a massive success and is still visited by players today. Since its launch, Rockstar Games has seen half a billion in revenue.
On top of that, the studio was already spread thin with the development of GTA Online and probably Red Dead Redemption II as well. It's unlikely that Rockstar would have the time to make them now as they work on GTA 6.
The game's Director of Design Imran Sawar added that getting the next-gen version of GTA 5 also took a while. With all those, the company did not feel that the single-player expansions were possible or necessary. Besides, Rockstar already saw success in GTA Online.
"At Rockstar, we will always have bandwidth issues because we are perfectionists and to make huge complex games takes a lot of time and resources," Sawar expressed, adding that they still love single-player open-world games more than anything.
We Might Be Better Off Without It
A DLC or expansion for GTA V sounds interesting, but it might've been the right decision on the studio's part to focus on other projects. Sawar stating that developers were perfectionists played out well for all players.
Red Dead Redemption II and GTA V are easily among the top-rated games in the market. If the developers had their attention elsewhere, we might not have gotten the flawless Wild West-themed open-world RPG where we played as Arthur Morgan.
Right now, fans would probably have the devs focus more on GTA 6 rather than create DLCs for GTA 5. The release window for the upcoming title is 2025, but everyone would agree that we would rather have it released sooner rather than later.
