Rockstar Central #42 (6 - 12 Jan)

[Spider-Vice]

art by @slohbur

GTA Next | GTA Online | GTA V | Red Dead Redemption | Red Dead Redemption II | R* General

Welcome to the 42nd week of Rockstar Central! Due to unavailability, this will be posted one hour prior to the norm! Yay for early Rockstar Central!
This week, we'll be introducing a new section to this publication! State of the Art will be a bi-weekly small opinion piece on anything related to Rockstar Games - their games, their handling of situations, news, etc. Along with this, we have some brand new GTA Online bonuses and a new vehicle, and of course some new Snaps to show off by the best photographers of GTAForums.

2017 was the biggest year for GTA Online! An ever-growing monster, it continues to be updated to this day, despite some clear saturation from a lot of its fans. December saw more players playing the game than ever before, on all platforms. On PC (Steam), it hit the 2nd highest peak since its release in April 2015!

On to the newest Online additions! A vehicle straight out of the 80s, with some arms power to keep everyone else in check, the Lampadati Viseris, with smooth handling and good-looks, is now available at Legendary Motorsport. You can upgrade this little fella in your Vehicle Workshop available on your Mobile Operations Centre or your Avenger (wait, how are you going to fly a plane while someone else is modding your car?), to mount front-facing machine guns.

Through the 15th of January, you can enjoy double GTA$ and RP on Lester Contact missions! A good way to win some extra money (remember more time = more payout), you can either do some of these alone or with some buddies.
You can also save 25% on land and air related assets this week! Find 25% off:

• The Nagasaki Ultralight
• Aircraft Weapons
• Vehicle Armour
• Headlights & Neons
• Skirts
• Spoilers
• Suspension
• Turbos

As always, two new races are available as Premium and Time Trial races. Those looking for the big bucks can enroll in the Island Hopping premium race, locked to the Blazer Aqua; whereas those looking for just a bit of a challenge (and some cash if you get a top time!) can try the Maze Bank Arena time trial.

State of the Art

(graphics pending)

Is silence speaking loud or are we going to be surprised? - Red Dead Redemption 2

In October 2016, after a few years of teasing an announcement that never happened, Red Dead Redemption 2 was announced and shown to the world. The first game had been one of the best games of its time and still continues to be, and is thus a very well-regarded series not just for hardcore fans of it or of Rockstar Games. To many, Red Dead Redemption was what introduced them to the world of Rockstar Games.
Everyone, including non-hardcore fans and the press, know that Rockstar like to be very silent about their projects. GTA V took a whopping nine months from the first trailer to the first two screenshots included in an Asked & Answered, and it was less than a year after that we got the then inevitable delay of the game, despite us having much more information than we have now about Red Dead Redemption 2.
After an unexplainably long period of silence after the Red Dead Redemption 2 initial announcement, and a lot of discussion about leaked maps, Rockstar employee curriculums and other things (even though this period was shorter than GTA V's initial "drought"), the first news we had about the game was a very surprising delay from Fall 2017 to Spring 2018. Understandably cautious after the experience of GTA V and GTA Online, many people kept and keep asking themselves what is actually happening to the game, and how focused it's going to be on Online, as the only thing we've had to date, were a few screenshots and another trailer showcasing small tidbits about the main characters, and the game's setting - Arthur Morgan, a new character, and the Dutch van der Linde gang from the first game.
A few months after this second trailer release, we haven't had much else about the game. The cautiousness and impatience remains, and fears of a lacklustre game start to grow quickly to some, whereas others are extremely optimistic about the game as a whole. However, it has been so long that another delay is starting to become a part of the equation.

For a lot of its history, Rockstar has suffered from the "announce early and then change everything and inevitably delay the game" syndrome. Max Payne 3 was slated for Winter 2009, until it got repeatedly delayed to May 2012 after many major changes in the story, soundtrack and even the player model. GTA V was announced in November 2011, not too long after it started to be fully developed, and when the game was in a pretty early alpha stage, forcing them to not be able to talk about the game much. This one saw a pretty rough development cycle as per the Rockstar developer logs leftover in the PS3 version of the game. A faction-based multiplayer element was replaced with GTA Online as far as late 2012, less than a year after the original release, amongst other things.
It is possible that Rockstar is playing it safer here, and not risking showing off content that they then may inevitably change. It's possible they could be waiting for an actual feature and story lockdown before showing everything to the fans, and start to release trailers, previews, gameplay videos and other things. At least this is what I am hoping is happening. After all, when RDR2 was announced, some Rockstar employee curriculums already mentioned an "unannounced game" being developed as far back as 2013, that makes 3 years between beginning of development and announcement, a different situation than GTA V, but we still got a delay. The hope here is that they're being cautious, and not possibly reacting to fan's expectations by having to change the game because it was going to be very underwhelming, or something. Please don't disappoint, Rockstar.

art by @slohbur

In Snaps of the Week, we show off 5 of the best screenshots, in no specific order, from this week's submissions all over the forums. This can include other games, other than GTA V, but admittedly there has been a shortage of pictures from other games. Enjoy and props to all the talented photographers and their characters!

@Black Terminator

@TeeKoo

@2-Edge

@Volganor

@_MK_