Ex-Grand Theft Auto lead writer and co-founder of Rockstar Games, Dan Houser, has acknowledged the long-rumoured cancelled single-player DLC for Grand Theft Auto V, revealing the expansion was roughly half complete before it was scrapped.
It’s been long reported that Rockstar was working on DLC for 2013’s open-world crime drama, although the success of Grand Theft Auto Online seemingly derailed these plans as it instead decided to focus on supporting the multiplayer companion to GTA V. However, Houser has now revealed during an appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast that he feels Red Dead Redemption 2 wouldn’t have happened if the DLC saw the light of day.
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The internet knows we made a DLC… single-player DLC for GTA 5 that never came out.
It was one when you played as Trevor, but he was a secret agent. It was cute. It never quite came together, and it was never finished. It was about half done when it got abandoned. But I think if that had come out, we probably wouldn’t have gotten to make Red Dead 2. So, there are always compromises.
Houser went on to say that he’s still very much a big fan of releasing additional content for single-player, and hopes to continue this with his new studio, Absurd Ventures.
I like making the stories. For me, I love the model of GTA 4 when you had the extra stories coming afterwards, or Red Dead 1 when you had the zombie pack coming afterwards. I like just doing these extra things. So, I would personally like to have done more of that in that company. And with stuff we’re doing in the future, we’re going to try and come up with worlds where we can add more stories.
I like single-player DLC. I just think the audience loves it, and it’s really fun to make.
Grand Theft Auto V was released for the PS3 and Xbox 360 back in September 2013, and was complemented by the release of GTA Online a month later. The game was ported to PS4 and Xbox One the following year and also received PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions a few years ago. Publisher Take-Two announced back in February that the game has sold over 210 million units worldwide.
Speaking in the same interview, Houser touched base on the cancelled PS3 title Agent, stating that the project didn’t work out as the open-world setting just isn’t a suitable fit for the spy genre.
[Source – Lex Fridman Podcast via IGN]