A leak containing the full source code for Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5 has been released online, and reveals former plans for up to eight single-player DLC packs, according to a report by Insider Gaming.
We only have the titles for the planned DLC, but they do give some hint for what could have been. The DLC present in the leak includes:
- SP Assassination Pack
- SP Manhunt Pack
- SP Norman Pack
- Agent Trevor
- Relationship Pack
- Enterprise Pack
- Prologue DLC
- LibertyV DLC
It is unclear how much content each of these would have contained, but at least some of them appear to be story-based, with a prologue to the game, a potential return to Liberty City, and whatever Agent Trevor is.
In a 2017 interview with Game Informer, Rockstar director of design Imran Sarwar gave some insight into why GTA 5 never received any single-player DLC, citing three major factors.
They felt that the story of GTA 5’s base game was complete, and viewed it as three games in and of itself. The next gen versions of the game also took significant time from the developers, and much of the resources went towards helping Grand Theft Auto Online reach its potential with updates and support. Finally, the studio had other games to work on, particularly Red Dead Redemption II. As such, they did not think single-player expansions would be the best use of their resources.
“The combination of these three factors means for this game, we did not feel single-player expansions were either possible or necessary, but we may well do them for future projects,” Sarwar said. “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. Not everything is always possible, but we still love single-player open-world games more than anything.”
Though they did not end up going through with it, it does not appear that they always intended to leave Grand Theft Auto 5 without DLC. With Grand Theft Auto 6 on the way, it is unlikely that we will hear more about the previous game’s DLC prospects.