A NEW FACE IN LOS SANTOS
Once GTA Online goes live, players are given access to a fourth player on their in-game character wheel. You can access this character at any time while playing the game, and receive invites from your friends for multiplayer events whether you are exploring the open online world yourself or engaging in criminal hijinks with one of the single-player characters.
Your character growth has a flow, but don't expect an overarching narrative that culminates in a definitive conclusion. Like any hyper-capitalist, your goal is to grow your bank account by any available means, which allows you to expand your personal brand by purchasing better vehicles, weapons, clothes, and real estate. Your character appears in cutscenes just like a regular protagonist when interacting with the various characters around the world, but like Grand Theft Auto III's Claude, he or she doesn't speak. (Yes, I said she – you can create a female character if you prefer.)
So how do you find your friends in this world? Rockstar uses a dynamic system that populates the world around you, first with your friends and fellow crew members, and then matches you with similarly skilled players in the same part of the world.
"We've set up Grand Theft Auto Online to be as customizable as possible," Benzies says. "You can lock down your games to only let the players you want in there. There are options to let the game decide who to play with – tell it to auto-fill the game and it will search the world for friends, your crew, or suitably skilled players. Or you can hand pick every player in a game. We've pushed to make sure play keeps rolling so you waste as little time in lobbies as possible – maximizing the playing time has been key to us."
THE FOURTH PROTAGONIST
In GTA Online, you don't play as GTA V protagonists Franklin, Michael, or Trevor. Instead, you create your own unique male or female. This noob steps off a plane into Los Santos, and from there you create a unique story with your own actions. But before you write your future, you need to sculpt your past in the character creator.
"This is the basis of how we do it in Grand Theft Auto Online: Choose your mum, dad, and grandparents, then out pops your character. You then spend time choosing your lifestyle, making choices about the kinds of things your character spends time doing, whether they spend more time partying or sitting on the couch or doing criminal activities than sleeping and being athletic - and your character is complete."
The skills you start with are based on the lifestyle you have chosen for your character, but just like the three GTA V protagonists, you can upgrade your various skills, buy new property, and customize your look by spending money on haircuts, tattoos, and clothing.
KEEPING TO YOURSELF
If you don't want to be bothered by other players while going shopping or driving to see the sights, you can enable a passive mode that protects you from stray (or intended) bullets. This is deactivated the moment you start shooting your own gun, however.
When you aren't in passive mode, try not to move through the world carrying too much cash. At any given time another player could kill you and take all the money on your person, and there is no recourse for recouping the lost money outside of exacting your own revenge. The smarter play is depositing your cash at one of the many ATMs located around Los Santos. When you put the money in the bank, nobody else can touch it and it's still available for making purchases much like a debit card.
If you get robbed by another player and demand satisfaction, you can put a bounty on his or her head.
MONEY: IT'S WHAT YOU WANT
As a new arrival to Los Santos, you don't start with much. But as you knock off convenience stores and complete missions for the various characters you meet along the way, you can spend your ill-gotten gains on living the lifestyle of the rich and infamous.
Each home comes with a garage for storing your vehicles. Modest apartments only have room for two vehicles, but if you splurge on a high-end luxury condominium, your garage can accomodate 10. You can treat this space like a showfloor, walking amongst your high-speed darlings to admire the customization you put into each one. Keeping these cars in mint condition isn't easy, so you can hire a mechanic to watch over them and buy insurance to avoid paying huge repair bills when you inevitably send a car careening off a bridge and into oncoming traffic.
After a rough job, head to your place and take a shower to clean off the blood and scars. You can also invite friends over. Many activities are available, including calling strippers, having a drink, looking through the telescope to enjoy the view, or watching one of the several Rockstar-created parody shows on TV. If other players in your world are in a high-speed chase with police, you can watch the action unfold on Weazel News. When the pursuit is happening in your neighborhood, you may even see the whirl of police lights out your window.
