- 15 hours ago
Category
🎈
FunTranscript
00:00Aha, yes, yes, this will, uh, do very nicely. Very nice place you've got. Very, uh, chic.
00:07Nothing like a bourgeois bank robber to remind me of how strange Los Santos has become.
00:12Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're logging into the online world that was so successful,
00:17Rockstar almost completely forgot how to make any other games.
00:21But only one person can be in charge. Respect. Hmm? Isn't that right, Paige?
00:27Blow me.
00:31Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring the bell to get notified about our latest
00:36videos.
00:39Heist came first on paper.
00:41This is it. Well, it's not it, but it's something. It's something, uh, very big.
00:48It's not quite ready yet, but I wanted to, uh, see how you're doing.
00:52The heist weren't just a content drop. They bolted on after the city was finished.
00:56After four, Sam Houser, Dan Houser, and Aaron Garbutz sat down, and the big idea was already giant jobs.
01:04The kind of score that needs a crew and a plan instead of one guy and a cell phone.
01:09And then they started the map, because the map takes forever, with online as the goal sitting on the other
01:14side of that bottleneck.
01:16You can still feel that particular order when you play it.
01:19Los Santos looks like a story city that got rented out, where all the apartments, the boards, the setup calls
01:25all behaved like the thing they wanted to ship,
01:28while the sidewalks were the part that kept eating into the development calendar.
01:31GTA Online didn't randomly grow a heist system. The heists waited on a city long enough to hide in.
01:38Uh, maybe now's not the best time to discuss irony. God, what is wrong with me, you know? I'm usually
01:45such a high achiever, you know?
01:47Alien Egg Delayed
01:49Here we go. Find the supplies and take them back to the lab, and make sure they're not too damaged
01:54in the process.
01:56GTA 5 shipped with a glow-in-the-dark egg already sitting in the files, and then did nothing with
02:02it for years.
02:03No mission, and no reason to know it was there unless you went looking through the props.
02:07Gunrunning is what finally gave the thing a job.
02:10The egg becomes a crate, and a piece of set dressing that had been unemployed since launch and suddenly has
02:17a buyer.
02:17That's the part that plays strange.
02:19You're not uncovering an alien story the campaign forgot to tell, and instead are moving merchandise that used to be
02:26a leftover model,
02:27while the payout treats it like any other special cargo.
02:31Online has a habit of hiring single-player scraps, but this one waited long enough to feel like the files
02:36invoiced the joke.
02:385 stored the egg, and the update put it on a truck.
02:41You know what to do. Collect the supplies and bring them safely to your technicians.
02:45Black phone. Punch 1-9-9-9-3-6-7-3-7-6-7 into a keypad, and online does
02:53something it's not supposed to do.
02:55A tiny explosion pops over your head, and the phone shell goes black, which is a leftover cheat in a
03:01mode that officially doesn't have any cheats.
03:03Story mode will let you wreck the rules, but online is the version where money, rank, and other people's sessions
03:09are the point.
03:10So a string that only repaints your handset feels like a developer forgot which build they were in.
03:15It doesn't pay you or unlock a garage, it just marks the phone and moves on.
03:21A live service city with a secret that only ruins the color of the handset is the correct amount of
03:26nonsense,
03:27and they left it in whether it was intentional or not.
03:30Lurcher's Ghost.
03:31The Albany Lurcher and the Frankenstange aren't just some random Halloween sketches.
03:37Both are based on real customs by George Barris, the builder who made weird cars look like they had a
03:42pulse,
03:43and Rockstar dropped them for the 2015 Halloween event like a seasonal shop with a pedigree.
03:48Sadly, Barris died shortly after that update, so the cars stayed.
03:53You can still buy and drive the joke around Los Santos,
03:56and the season that introduced them now has a name the garage doesn't bother explaining.
04:01A limited time drop became permanent stock,
04:04and the person it was nodding at was gone before most players ever even clocked the reference.
04:09The Lurcher still drives like a costume, while the timing is the part that doesn't reset in October.
04:14Lester works for free.
04:16Go over it. Study the plan. Tick it off the list.
04:20You must be methodical. This isn't just a dumb crime.
04:25Well, there is an element of that, huh?
04:28Finish every Doomsday finale, and Lester's wanted-level wipe drops to $0. Forever.
04:34Not a sale or a weekly discount, just a hidden loyalty perk for the people who sat through the setups
04:39instead of buying their way past the sirens.
04:42Lester has been the guy on the phone since the story,
04:45charging a fee to make the cops forget your face,
04:47and then online kept the invoice until you proved you had done the homework.
04:51And after that, he just does it.
04:53Playing the city with that switch flipped feels like the mode briefly remembered it can reward time
04:58instead of a card.
04:59Most perks in here are a menu,
05:01but this one is a receipt that finally stops charging you for the privilege.
05:06You ready?
05:06What do you think?
05:07You, uh, questions? Comments? Concerns?
05:10All right.
05:11What are you waiting for?
05:12Let's go see this place.
05:13Want even more GTA content?
05:15Then head to MojoPlays 24x7 livestream for all the best content that gaming has to offer.
05:21Scan the QR code on screen to join us live for non-stop fun.
05:2516 seats.
05:26So that's clear, it's not me you're gonna be helping,
05:28and I want it understood that I am not involved.
05:32Just a bystander doing a favor,
05:34and this is not an offer of employment so much as an opportunity.
05:38Launch Day Online didn't hand you a city,
05:40it handed you 16 seats.
05:42The persistent world pitch sounded like Los Santos would keep running while you slept,
05:47while what shipped was a large lobby with a convincing backdrop.
05:50The map was already huge, but the waiting room wasn't.
05:5416 players is a party rather than a population,
05:57and the traffic and the shops had to pretend the block was alive while most of it was empty.
06:02Later updates stuffed the session until the joke got harder to see,
06:06but at launch the fantasy was the loading screen while the reality was a room with a cap.
06:11The city was just the set piece, and the lobby was the game.
06:15Clifford is right, the data is clear, it's right now.
06:18The entire department is out sharing meatloaf and potato salad so their base can be permanently shut down!
06:25Jetpack Script.
06:26Data miners have been opening 5's guts for a decade because of a couple file names and a scribble.
06:32Gadget underscore jetpack and prop spa jetpack sit in the PvP,
06:37and the mountain mural did the rest, sending people up Mount Chiliid like the label was a promise.
06:43Sadly, the live files still don't contain a pack you can fly.
06:47GTA Online trained a generation to treat unused strings as upcoming products,
06:52so a prop name became a hunt with coordinates.
06:55You can stand on the mural and read the theories,
06:58while the jetpack remains nothing more than a line in a database.
07:01Rockstar left the breadcrumb for curious players,
07:04they just didn't leave the jet engine in the same file.
07:08Handholds.xml
07:09Here, I don't have my tools.
07:11Ain't that convenient.
07:13I've got some tools.
07:14Come on.
07:16Let's throw me back at your place.
07:17And don't worry, the transponder will be ready for the job.
07:20A file called handholds.xml still lists vine and ledge climbing points across the map,
07:27like online inherited elements of a parkour game, but then never switched it on.
07:32Franklin's cut vine climbout of compilations was the visible tip,
07:36while the rest is a list of places your hands were supposed to go.
07:39Play the city now, and the geometry keeps offering ledges you can't use,
07:44balconies, and drainage cuts that look like traversal,
07:47right up until you bump them, and remember, this is a driving game that occasionally lets
07:51you jump a fence.
07:53However, the file says they blocked it out anyway.
07:56There's no missing mission, instead, players find a missing verb still labeled,
08:00and still pointing at walls you're only allowed to look at.
08:03People have too many ideas in my day.
08:06Ideas?
08:07Bad.
08:08The race that can't exist.
08:10The online intro features a race filled with mixed classes,
08:14and everyone in whatever they bought,
08:16which is a lovely opening, but also illegal under the rule set you are about to live in.
08:22Custom races don't let that lobby happen, whereas the cinematic does.
08:27The first thing the mode teaches you about competition in the game
08:30is a version of said competition it would never actually host.
08:34You watch it, and you get the tone,
08:36but then the menus arrive to explain class limits like the opening was a dream the rulebook had.
08:41The trailer for the mode is a rules violation,
08:44and nobody bothered to patch the movie.
08:46GTA Online's personality has always been about the gap between the spectacle and the form you have to fill out
08:53just to join it.
08:54Clone on the Toilet.
08:55Hello? Who's this?
08:57I'm calling you from a top-secret former government facility.
09:01I told you.
09:02We told you to return to civilian life, Avon.
09:07Doomsday lets you find Agent 14 on the Toilet, completely naked,
09:11which is already more information than a mission setup requires.
09:15However, if you pan the camera off the joke,
09:17there's a second Agent 14 right there, fully clothed,
09:21running the same animation like the scene got duplicated,
09:24and only one of them was told to commit to the scene.
09:26Games hide the real actor around the corner all the time,
09:30so the shot can sell a performance the rig cannot do in frame.
09:33But Online forgot to put a wall thick enough between you and the spare.
09:38The clothed one is the employee who showed up dressed and ready for the next mission,
09:42while the naked one is the punchline,
09:44and both of them are clocking in.
09:47Why are you talking like that?
09:48It really annoyed people when you were working on site.
09:51I'm a visionary.
09:53I see things.
09:54Chinatown Economy.
09:56You see, the Vargos can go places a U.S. extradition treaty can't.
10:01I mean, nice, hot places with beaches
10:03that will otherwise attract a snowbird like me.
10:06Online almost had a full drug loop
10:09in which players would buy, sell, and transport the stock
10:12that's sitting in the files as icons and code,
10:15a complete second business under the one they actually shipped.
10:18It just never got switched on.
10:21You can see the shape of it in how the later bike and nightclub updates behave,
10:24with menus and a van that has to reach a drop without the session ruining your afternoon.
10:29The Chinatown version just stayed dark,
10:32while the economy you actually play is gun parts and cargo and whatever the weekly bonus is pushing.
10:38The older loop remains the road not taken,
10:41a crime sim that somehow flinched at the trade the box art had been winking at since 1997.
10:45They built the register, but just never opened the shop.
10:49Oh man, I could smell that grass like 10 minutes ago.
10:53That's some good goat.
10:55Yeah, I used to smoke when I was in college.
10:58Man, that was some far out times.
11:00Finished, then deleted.
11:01So, are you ready?
11:04This should be pretty easy.
11:06I've kept it simple since you all seem pretty simple.
11:09Producer John Riccio has previously talked about minigames and iterated levels
11:13that were done except for animation polish, and then just disappeared.
11:17Not banked for a DLC trailer or delayed into a future update, completely removed.
11:23That's a different kind of cut from a sketch in a dock,
11:26because it means somebody played those modes and somebody blocked the levels,
11:30but then the build moved on and all that time and development work didn't come with it.
11:35Online's public history is consistent updates arriving on a regular timeline,
11:39while the private history is updates that got finished and still somehow missed the truck.
11:44The only proof they ever existed is a person saying they had designed and played them,
11:49only for that work to become vaporware and rumors.
11:52Well, this has been, uh, horrifying.
11:56Really, really horrifying, but, uh, also pretty fun.
11:59So, bye-bye!
12:02Spine Tingler
12:03Leslie Benzies had a test for every GTA since 3,
12:07a single moment where the game truly clicks.
12:10For 3, it was Misty in the car,
12:12and for 5, it was the last airplane mission.
12:15Online wasn't a mission at all.
12:17It was just two players, one in a jetpack and one in a helicopter,
12:21and the realization that the risk might actually work.
12:24The gameplay click was nothing more than shared airspace.
12:28Two strangers trusted the netcode with machinery that could end a session in a second,
12:33but the session held.
12:35You can still feel that bet every time a jet arrives uninvited,
12:38and the game needs to decide whether this is content or a crash report.
12:43Online is the only version where somebody else is controlling the other vehicle.
12:47Four players or bust.
12:54I'm freaking out!
12:55Okay, okay, we need to hit the servers.
12:58Four of them.
12:59Imran Sarwar has described the story heist as one brain swapping bodies,
13:03a clean way to run a crew when the crew is just you.
13:07But online couldn't do that,
13:09so every seat had to matter,
13:11or the mode was just a story with spectators,
13:14and that one rewrite took months.
13:17They landed on four players under a leader,
13:19working off a planning board in a high-end apartment,
13:22and that's still the shape of a heist decade later.
13:25Somebody owns the board,
13:26while everybody else has a job that fails if they wander off.
13:30It's far less flexible than the single-player fantasy,
13:33but more playable than the drafts
13:35where a lobby of interchangeable crooks kept falling over.
13:38Four was the number that still felt like a gang
13:40and managed to fit on one couch.
13:43Normally, there would be a buy-in.
13:45You would put in money up front,
13:46we would arrange the job,
13:47and you would pull it off,
13:48but this time I'll cover the upfront costs.
13:51We've started it before.
13:53Aha, yes, yes, this will do very nicely.
13:57Very nice place you've got.
13:58Very chic.
14:00In 2013, Benzies said they had begun a real GTA Online world
14:04more than a few times, but never finished it.
14:07Five was the first time they had the engine
14:09and the headcount in the same building
14:11to give it a real chance,
14:13and that line explains the launch better than any patch note.
14:16Online wasn't a sudden invention
14:18made exclusively for the eighth-generation launch.
14:21It was a project that had already died enough time
14:24to make the survivors careful,
14:25and the platform finally stopped being the excuse.
14:28You can still feel the earlier attempts
14:30in how strange the first year feels.
14:33Late heists with small sessions and systems
14:35that behaved like they were lifted out of a test
14:37and told to meet the public.
14:39You know what?
14:40Like I said, it is your first time,
14:42so don't expect too much.
14:45Shark cards keep the city whole.
14:47Okay, we're going in through the side door.
14:49I hope you brought your A game,
14:51because you're not getting a warm-up.
14:53Drive over there, and I'll be in touch.
14:56Rockstar's 2014 defense of shark cards
14:58was surprisingly simple.
15:00They would sell cash instead of paid DLC,
15:02so the updates didn't completely split the player base.
15:06One city, one version,
15:07with everybody able to walk into the new things
15:10even if they didn't buy the latest shortcut.
15:12However, that's also the reason
15:14the casino sat dark for six years,
15:17because gambling next to a cash shop
15:19looked like a legal hand grenade,
15:20and nobody wanted to be the studio
15:22that played around and found out in court.
15:25If you played the early years,
15:26the diamond was right there,
15:28lights off, while the rest of the map
15:30kept opening new shops.
15:32The cards were the game's update plan,
15:34while the empty building was the studio's legal plan,
15:37and both still shipped in the same release.
15:45Build Logs on the Disc
15:47Okay, Mr. Kress said you guys
15:50are at least semi-competent, so, well...
15:52The original PS3 copy of GTA V
15:55didn't just ship with the game,
15:56it also shipped with Rockstar's homework.
15:59Internal online build logs were still on the disc,
16:02filled with daily status notes from the team,
16:04and data miners read them to reconstruct Cops and Crooks,
16:08the faction version of the mode
16:10that never reached the servers.
16:11Instead of finding a hidden mission,
16:13you were finding the office arguing with itself
16:16about a draft the public had not been shown,
16:18dated and sitting next to the executable,
16:21like nobody cleared the internal folder
16:23before the discs were pressed.
16:24The launch trailer gave players a loading screen
16:27and a 16-player room,
16:28while the disc gave them the earlier plan written down.
16:32Online's first draft didn't leak from a random server or a hack,
16:36it just came in the box.
16:37I mean, he suffered a lot.
16:40He's not the horrific, bloodthirsty maniac
16:42that we all imagine he is.
16:44Well, he is, but he's got a gentler side.
16:48The fourth slice.
16:50Open the character wheel in GTA V,
16:52and it doesn't offer you a multiplayer menu.
16:54It counts down,
16:56then gives you a fourth face
16:57that isn't Franklin, Michael, or Trevor.
17:00That missing slice is GTA Online,
17:03sitting in the select screen like a protagonist
17:05as the campaign never properly introduced.
17:07You are picking from a traditional playlist
17:09in that final slice.
17:11Instead, you're picking a person
17:13who only exists once the shared city loads.
17:16GTA Online's launch was still a 16-player lobby
17:19with a wanted level,
17:20so the wheel was promising a lead
17:22the mode couldn't play yet.
17:24Story mode still only has three characters,
17:27while the last one on the wheel
17:28is whoever you brought along
17:29to the next big chaotic crime spree,
17:32the unnamed beta.
17:33Yes, you're doing good.
17:35Just three more little tasks to perform,
17:38and we should be good to go.
17:40In the darkest days early in GTA Online's launch,
17:43servers melted and characters vanished,
17:46and Rockstar paid $500,000 in hush money
17:49without ever calling the launch a beta,
17:51which is a fantastic way to have a beta.
17:54However, Forbes said the quiet part out loud
17:57because the studio never would.
17:59Players who were there still described saves
18:01disappearing like a random weather event,
18:03wiping out any and all progress
18:05in the blink of an eye.
18:07The company described a launch
18:08that had a bad weekend,
18:10skipped the word test,
18:11and the test becomes the release.
18:13The release becomes the thing
18:14you apologize for with a check.
18:16The city might have survived,
18:18but the choice of wording didn't,
18:20and they have been patching over both
18:21ever since,
18:22pretending the entire event never happened.
18:25We did it!
18:27Well, you did it!
18:29I know, I didn't do that much,
18:31but you, you, oh, you!
18:35The Indestructible Bench
18:37Sitting inconspicuously in Vinewood
18:39is a bench with a plaque that reads
18:41In Memory of Chris Edwards,
18:43a Rockstar employee who tragically passed away
18:46while Five was in production.
18:48Rockstar took great care with this particular bench,
18:51and as such, it cannot be harmed in any way.
18:54The bench is next to it, you can,
18:56and that's the most important detail
18:57that makes it land with so much weight.
18:59Online will let you erase almost any joke
19:02on the sidewalk,
19:03but this seat is impervious to damage.
19:05Most players sit on it,
19:07or shoot the one beside it,
19:08and never read the plate.
19:10Memorials in the series are usually
19:12a radio line and a credit roll,
19:14while this one is street furniture
19:16that refuses to be part of the fantasy.
19:18Liberty Remastered.
19:20That's the problem.
19:21This place has more leaks
19:22than a thing you dry salad in.
19:24But who and why?
19:25A new Liberty City,
19:27bigger than the one in four,
19:28was blocked out and planned for Five and Online.
19:32Not just a simple port of the familiar old map,
19:34a fully realized sequel city,
19:37laid out on the table
19:38while Los Santos took the full release.
19:41Shoreline data from that plan
19:42finally got reconstructed in 2026,
19:45which is a long wait for a coast
19:47the game never lets you drive to.
19:49Rockstar clearly doesn't like
19:50leaving a city behind,
19:51so the old one came back as a layout,
19:54but then lost the argument to the new one.
19:56Online spent a decade pushing south,
19:59out over the water,
20:00and into buildings while Liberty City
20:02stayed trapped in a file.
20:03It was further along than a simple rumor,
20:06yet still never became a fairy destination.
20:09Get to work.
20:10I'll be in touch.
20:12And expect the worst.
20:13He's on to us.
20:15Back to Square One.
20:17The world,
20:17the world owes you a massive favor.
20:20Oh, well,
20:21but we like cash.
20:23Understood.
20:25Rockstar's line on Heist
20:27is that the early builds
20:28weren't good enough
20:29and got scrapped more than once.
20:31So naturally,
20:32the public date moved with them.
20:34First, it was planned to release at launch,
20:36then within the first few weeks,
20:38and then Spring 2014,
20:40before finally releasing on March 10th, 2015.
20:43You can feel the scrapped versions
20:45and how finished those first heists look
20:47and play next to the rest of year one's releases.
20:50The final version with all its apartments,
20:52board setup,
20:53and structure that doesn't resemble anything
20:55from the 16-player toy from launch
20:57is the version modern players believe
20:59was there from day one.
21:01Rockstar wasn't delaying a trailer.
21:03They were constantly throwing out builds
21:05until one of them could survive
21:06four strangers and a bad host,
21:08and the patch date
21:09is the end of that argument,
21:11not the start.
21:12You did good.
21:14Very good.
21:15I brought them in.
21:16They're my contacts.
21:17It's like I said.
21:18I thought you said you never met them.
21:19I never met some of them.
21:22Don't worry.
21:22Cops and Crooks 1.0
21:24The launch pitch inside the studio
21:26was not for GTA Online to be another MMO.
21:30Instead, it was originally a choice
21:32of which side you wanted to be on.
21:34The main options were planned to be
21:36the lost MC, the Vagos, or the cops,
21:39with bosses and tattoos
21:40and specific jobs coming off your phone.
21:43Leftover logos and animations
21:44are still in the files,
21:46which is how you know the uniform got cut
21:48while the design doc didn't.
21:50The mode you actually load
21:51is as a free agent with a menu,
21:53while the original draft
21:55would have picked your side at the door
21:57and decided who could call you
21:58and who was already angry.
22:00Rockstar dropped that select screen
22:02before anyone in public saw it,
22:04but the remnants still hide in the code
22:06while the session everyone continues to play
22:08is the version where everybody is freelance
22:11instead of tied to allegiances.
22:13Trust.
22:14That's why I'm here.
22:15I have a proposition, you see.
22:17Late in the heist art for the court's job,
22:19there's a dinery robbery labeled Trust.
22:22It's painted like an Edward Hopper,
22:24with a couple at a burger shot,
22:26and it matches the 2022 Jason and Lucia leak
22:29almost beat for beat.
22:30However, nobody in 2015 had a reason
22:33to read it that way,
22:34because it just looked like set dressing
22:36for a score you were already playing,
22:38the kind of framed job Rockstar hangs in a planning room
22:42so the wall feels busy.
22:43But then the leak arrived
22:45and the label stopped being decoration.
22:47Rockstar had put the next game on a wall
22:49in the current one and let the camera pan right past it.
22:53Stand in that room now,
22:54and online is carrying concept art
22:56for a story that was not its story.
22:58And the painting had been spoiling the pitch for years,
23:01while the leak just made the caption readable.
23:04I knew you had taste,
23:06but this is dedication.
23:09This does not exist.
23:11West of Humane Labs,
23:12there used to be a white cube in the sky
23:14with the text,
23:15this does not exist,
23:17and a twin of it under the map
23:19if you clipped down far enough to look.
23:21Rockstar quietly deleted the one in the air
23:23after about 12 years,
23:25which is a long time to leave a denial
23:27hanging over the ocean.
23:28The cube's only job was to tell you
23:30it wasn't real
23:31while you were looking right at it.
23:34Players only found it
23:35because online had already trained them
23:37to aim at the horizon
23:38and assume something was looking back.
23:40And then the studio removed the sentence
23:42while leaving the habit behind.
23:44The sky cube might be gone,
23:46but the one under the map
23:47and the reason anybody went looking
23:49in the first place
23:50is still down there.
23:51What are some of your favorite discoveries
23:53you found in GTA Online,
23:55and what changes are you hoping
23:57Rockstar makes for GTA Online 2.0?
24:00Share your discoveries and hopes
24:02in the comments.
24:03Did you enjoy this video?
24:05Check out these other clips for Mojo Plays,
24:07and be sure to subscribe and ring the bell
24:09to be notified about our latest videos.