An unlucky Grand Theft Auto Online player repeatedly has their helicopter stolen from them by NPCs – who are even fighting with each other over it.
Vehicle-based crime is the literal name of the game in Grand Theft Auto Online, but one unlucky player recently found themselves on the receiving end of a high-flying heist, with NPCs repeatedly stealing their Sparrow helicopter. As an online multiplayer spin-off to Rockstar Games’ universally acclaimed Grand Theft Auto 5, Grand Theft Auto Online serves as a virtual playground for gamers to create their own mayhem in GTA Online’s open world of Los Santos by completing a wide variety of side activities or simply roaming around with an equally expansive assortment of vehicles.
A large part of GTA Online’s appeal comes from the unpredictable nature of Los Santos’s NPC civilians, who tend to either flee from the chaos caused by players or engage in the madness themselves. These computer-controlled citizens sometimes chase players across Grand Theft Auto Online’s Los Santos, and one GTA Online update introduced an indestructible, shotgun-wielding NPC that menaced players like a digital version of the infamous T-800 Terminator. Some believe the game’s most recent Contract update has made Grand Theft Auto Online’s NPCs even more aggressive, with computer-controlled characters retaliating against the users regularly wreaking havoc across their digital homes.
Reddit user Paulchen_Lichtstrahl recently shared a gameplay clip of such an NPC encounter to the Grand Theft Auto Online subreddit (via GameRant), in which they had their Sparrow helicopter stolen multiple times. Paulchen_Lichtstrahl had either just landed or was getting ready to take off when an NPC runs up to the grounded chopper and yanks their avatar out of the cockpit. Before they can respond to this attempted helicopter theft, a group of NPC-driven vehicles suddenly rams into them, allowing yet another NPC to charge the helicopter and pull the first NPC out just as they had done to Paulchen_Lichtstrahl. This final Grand Theft Auto Online NPC manages to lift off and escape, leaving both Paulchen_Lichtstrahl and the first would-be copter thief to look on in both amazement and confusion.
Having a vehicle stolen out from under the player is just a minor inconvenience in Grand Theft Auto Online, as users can simply steal another in the busy city streets around them or have one they already own delivered to them. Additionally, another Reddit user pointed out they can both retrieve their stollen Sparrow and enact brutal revenge against the thief by having the vehicle sent back to storage – leaving the unlucky NPC pilot to plummet back down to Los Santos. While this isn’t the case with Paulchen_Lichtstrahl’s recent run-in with a pair of helicopter-stealing NPCs, some GTA Online players have even figured out how to recover vehicles impounded by the game’s digital authorities without having to travel to an impound lot or pay a fine.
All in all, much of Grand Theft Auto Online’s success and appeal stems from just how unpredictable the massively multiplayer game can be. As Rockstar Games continues development on the recently-announced Grand Theft Auto 6, fans will likely continue to pass the time by stealing vehicles and causing all kinds of digital mayhem in the sandbox of Grand Theft Auto Online – assuming that the computer-controlled citizens of Los Santos don’t beat them to it.
Source: Paulchen_Lichtstrahl/Reddit (via GameRant)
J. Brodie Shirey is just a simple man trying to make his way in the universe, but aren’t we all? He currently lives in York, Pennsylvania. He is a big comic book, video game, and science fiction fan, and likes writing articles for ScreenRant or scripts for some of his crazy TV show ideas.
A graduate from York County School of Technology, he’s self-published several books on Amazon, and once won 1st place at a regional computer fair for a CGI animated short. He might post it on Youtube someday. He hopes that working for this site will be his first step into the larger universe of online writing, since Megazord technology hasn’t been invented yet and he doesn’t seem to have any Force powers. You can check out his work at The Uncanny Fox, purchase his books on Amazon.com, see his posted scripts on Script Revolution, or see his portfolio here or here. He can also be followed on Twitter @FoxUncanny.
