In addition to the official Heists trailer for "GTA 5" recently being released, an interview by IGN with GTA Online producer and lead mission designer Imran Sarwar sheds some light on why Heist missions took so long to implement for online gameplay.

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To say Heists are highly anticipated by gamers is an understatement. GTA enthusiasts have wanted Heists for Online ever since the launch of the game in late 2013. Rockstar Games intended on Heist missions being ready for launch in the spring, but complications have since caused numerous delays.

In Story Mode, Heists were essentially focused on one player. Because of this, one of the biggest challenges with creating Online Heists was to make sure every player in the mission had a substantial role and central to the action.

For example, during the bank Heist in Story Mode, most of the focus was going down in the vault to pull off the heist, and the gamer could then use the character swap to turn into the getaway driver. But there's no character swaps in GTA Online, and the gamer playing the getaway driver would need something interesting to do rather than sitting in a vehicle the whole mission.

That's why Rockstar created several different situations and multiple different aspects of missions that were never seen in Heist missions within the Story Mode. It wasn't as simple to just transfer Heist missions from Story Mode to GTA Online. To make it work for multiple players, Rockstar essentially needed to create an entirely new game mode with multiple variations of missions.

"After many months of designing, testing, rewriting and re-testing, we settled on the four-player structure that you will experience in the game," Sarwar said in the interview. "It took a ton of work from our programmers and mission designers to make it work at the level we were happy with."

In addition to the overwhelming creation of Heists, Rockstar also had a daunting task of implementing "GTA 5" for PS4, Xbox One and PC consoles, as well as creating a brand new First Person Mode.

Gamers should certainly understand why Heists took so long when they soon experience the multiple variations of Heist missions that have never been seen before. The full interview revealed on IGN's official website has many more details on Heists and is certainly worth checking out. The official Heists trailer can be seen below. 

 

TagsGrand Theft Auto V, GTA 5 Online, heists, Trailer, IGN, mission designer Imran Sarwar, Rockstar Games, Story Mode