GTA Online’s next-gen version is prettier and easier to get into

theverge.com:

With this week’s launch of the next-gen versions of GTA Online for the Xbox Series X and PS5, Rockstar has made it easier and faster to jumpstart your life of crime in the best-looking and best-playing version of its online open-world mode. All of the same graphical and quality-of-life changes that recently arrived in GTA V, which my colleague Andrew Webster reported on here, can also be found in GTA Online.

Whether you’re a new player, or you’re migrating a character from a previous console, one of my favorite improvements is that it’s easier to be funneled into the kind of content you want to play. From the main menu, you can enter heists, free mode (where you can just roam about with no immediate objective), or be directed to new content, like “The Contract” missions featuring Dr. Dre and GTA V’sFranklin.

New players will first need to complete a few small, get-your-feet-wet missions before they can access the wider slew of content types. The game keeps out other online players until you reach level five, which requires about 25 minutes of play. That may annoy some who are hoping to jump in immediately with friends, but it could be key for keeping new players engaged instead of frustrated by repeat kills from more experienced and kitted-out players.

These changes provide a clear sense of what GTA Online offers at any given time, and it’s great that Rockstar is delivering the online mode’s heap of content in a more streamlined manner. Previously, jumping into GTA Online felt too aimless, yet simultaneously overwhelming for me, as the game tried to point me in several directions at once.

But after jumping in for the first time in a couple of years, it feels more guided with the introduction of the new mode select