While Grand Theft Auto 5’s online component got a delayed start and a rocky launch, it served to totally redefine the largely story-driven single-player series as a massive online sandbox that’s consistently remained one of the best-selling, most-played games in the world even years after its original release.
Check out the best sandbox games on PC.
It’s been pretty clear that the multiplayer component’s success has diverted any attention Rockstar might otherwise have placed on single-player content updates, but a new Game Informer interview with design director Imran Sarwar makes that explicit – and confirms we shouldn’t expect any single-player DLC for the game in the future.
It appears it was a bunch of awkward timing that kept Rockstar from investing in single-player add-ons for GTA5. “The next-gen versions took a year of everyone’s time to get right,” says Sarwar, “then the online component had a lot of potential, but to come close to realizing that potential also sucked up a lot of resources. And then there are other games – in particular Red Dead Redemption 2. The combination of these three factors means for this game, we did not feel single-player expansions were either possible or necessary.”
Yet the company is absolutely not ruling out solo add-ons altogether. “We would love to do more single-player add-ons for games in the future. As a company we love single-player more than anything, and believe in it absolutely – for storytelling and a sense of immersion in a world, multiplayer games don’t rival single-player games.”
That’s comforting to hear, especially given that Rockstar’s previous bits of story-driven DLC, from GTA4’s Lost and Damned or Ballad of Gay Tony to Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare, have proven to be among the finest content the company’s ever produced. It’s not as if base GTA5 was lacking in content – nor will Red Dead Redemption2, surely – but it’s good to see the success of GTA Online hasn’t blinded Rockstar to the power of single-player.
Whether or not you’re a fan of GTA Online, it seems things will start winding down with RDR2 on the horizon. “We don’t yet have a fixed end point in mind,” says Sarwar, “but the rollout of updates may change a little in order to encourage players to try Red Dead Redemption 2 when it launches. It would be great to have players splitting time between two incredible worlds, but we shall see how things evolve.” It’s certainly not as if the mode has been lacking for content.