Dataminers and modders The Game File Gurus have not only managed to uncover a previously secret UFO mission in GTA Online, the online-only flipside to Grand Theft Auto V's solo open world, but they've been able to play it, too. Kinda.
As you can see in the video below, the GFG team were able to force GTA Online into starting a mission, a 'business battle', involving a UFO stored (but seemingly remaining semi-active) in a Fort Zancudo hangar. Their achievement was spotted by Kotaku, who note that the UFO is buried within GTA Online's Big Summer Special update, further details of which can be found here.
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The Game File Gurus discovered a model for a UFO in the update files, as Gamespot explains, and worked out that its presence was connected to a business battle - a kind of time-sensitive freemode event where players compete to steal valuable cargo. And let's be fair, a UFO is likely to be pretty valuable. In this instance, the winning team recovers UFO parts (scattered around the UFO) which are then taken to a character called Omega, who's fairly obsessed with all things alien (and can be encountered in the offline GTA V campaign, too).
The Game File Gurus explained to Kotaku that activating this new UFO mission took no little effort, with over 40 online and local scripts needing changing to get it to start. The team says that this is likely Rockstar's way of cracking down on dataminers revealing content before the publisher is ready to make it public.
Which is to say: it's very likely that this UFO mission/battle will roll out to every player of GTA Online in the near future, and it won't necessarily play out in the exact way that The Game File Gurus witnessed, since they had to effectively break the game to get it to run. Could it be that a pilotable UFO is (finally) coming to GTA Online? Maybe, else this is such a tease, we can't bear it.
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This isn't the first time that aliens have been confirmed in Grand Theft Auto V and the wider GTA universe, of course. Indeed, this very UFO looks a lot like the one that can be found, in GTA V, hovering over Fort Zancudo when you've hit 100% in the game. But whenever there's extraterrestrial activity in the series it tends to be a lot of fun. This looks to be no different, so hopefully Rockstar will be pressing their own big green button on this particular mission, soon.
Featured Image Credit: Rockstar Games, The Game File GurusTopics: Grand Theft Auto 5, Rockstar, GTA Online, Grand Theft Auto