Avid GTA fans are in for some exciting news as renowned YouTuber MrBossFTW (aka Ross) explains the truth behind ensuing rumours of new Liberty City DLC or map expansion update coming to GTA 5, in his latest gameplay video. It must be noted that several fans of the GTA franchise have long been requesting the release of a map expansion DLC based on Liberty City for GTA 5 and GTA Online.
About seven months ago, there was a leaked image depicting the locales around Liberty City, which was recreated using the GTA 5 engine. Henceforth, it can be deduced that Rockstar Games indeed had some plans to release Liberty City as an expansion pack in GTA Online.
It was later ascertained that the locale screenshots actually belonged to an artist's portfolio that were recreated with the GTA 5 game engine. It is evident that all such developmental work related to the map expansion pack has now been scrapped.
However, the GTA community is very eager to explore the uncharted territories like Liberty City or San Fiero or Las Venturas, especially given the massive scope of connecting through big cities via air and water in GTA Online.
Considering Rockstar's previous attempt at introducing map expansions with the PS2 version of San Andreas, it is almost certain that such an expansion pack could be on the game maker's wishlist.
Meanwhile, the industrious OpenIV developer team has managed to build Liberty City map into GTA 5 as depicted in the teaser trailer below:
As explained by a fellow Reddit user named 'leveldock6', here are the highlights of the Liberty City beta release:
- It is added to the world space; does NOT replace San Andreas
- No traffic or pedestrians in LC as of yet
- They will provide a tool to convert the map from your installation of IV/EFLC (either is fine); they won't supply the whole map due to legal reasons. They have however planned (and done) some updates to the map assets such as actual flags instead of the static ones from IV for example
- No estimated release date yet
- It'll get released to everyone when they feel it's ready; no early access bs to certain people.
The OpenIV team has been working on this project ever since the release of GTA 5 and the project is now ready to be explored in the form of a DLC or a DYI tool that converts the map from the installation setup files.
Interested gamers might download the OpenIV 2.8 tool from the official developer portal and also contribute some funds for further development of the project. The Liberty City DLC mod is expected to get more map updates in the future.
Presently, the Liberty City mapping tool is powered by OpenIV and openFormats and it does not include a full-fledged or fully-functional standalone map, but has a built-in automatic map converter to copy the game world from GTA 4 to GTA 5.
It must be noted that the Liberty City mod is currently supported only on PCs with necessary map conversion tools installed. There is no word on the official public release yet or when we would be getting a fully-functional Liberty City map in GTA 5.
Note: The Liberty City map blends into the existing game world of San Andreas and does not actually overwrite or replace it, which is a big plus for hardcore GTA fans who just hate to compromise on the game content.
As Ross notes, there are infinite possibilities when it comes to adding map expansion packs into GTA Online such as introducing the Las Vegas game world at the edge of Paleto Bay or expanding the vast stretch of desert across Sandy Shores with a new city map.
According to Yan2295's recent post on GTA Forums, Rockstar Games is at the verge of reconsidering the strategy of releasing separate DLC updates for the game's story mode in GTA 5. However, such a feat may not be possible for the game maker until the worldwide release of Red Dead Redemption 2.
