The Duggans have taken over management of the Diamond Casino & Resort, with all the money that GTA Online players are spending on penthouses and gambling fattening their wallets. Not to worry though, the latest DLC — The Diamond Casino Heist — is here to set things straight.
Despite your help during the Diamond DLC storyline, Tao Cheng has lost ownership of the Diamond, Los Santos' top (and apparently only) casino. Georgina Cheng takes the reins and contacts some of the best professional thieves in the city — that's you — as well as criminal mastermind Lester Crest to even the score. The plan? Rob the Diamond's vault.
The first step in such an ambitious heist is planning and you'll need a secure location to brainstorm. This is where the new DLC's property comes in — the Arcade. Your Arcade business will be a legitimate venture, but also a front for your HQ. You can stock up with 12 different kinds of games to attract clientele and there are a number of upgrades available for you to increase the income of the Arcade.
The twelve games cover a wide range of different genres and styles and are all fully playable. In case playing GTA Online isn't enough, you can now play a game while you play a game. The games include Badlands Revenge 2, a bombastic action game, three installments of Race and Chase, Nazar Speaks Fortune Teller, which is a reference to Red Dead Online, and many more.
Under the Arcade you'll find the Hideout, which is where you will prepare for the heist itself. Equipped with three planning boards, a getaway vehicle garage, equipment storage and practice areas for safe cracking, hacking and lockpicking, this is the ultimate robbery basecamp. You will need to take advantage of Lester's criminal connections to hire Drivers, Gunmen and Hackers for the job, each of whom bring different strengths to the table.
The heist itself is one of the game's most complex, multi-layered missions ever. For starters, there are three ways to approach the task.
The Silent & Sneaky approach favors stealth and diversions, allowing you to ideally get in and out without firing a single shot.
The Big Con does away with sneaking and has you simply waltz in and take what you want — under the guise of being Pest Control contractors. As long as you can keep up the act, you'll be able to walk in the front door and leave through it too, while the management thanks you for the service.
Finally, the Aggressive approach is a lot more direct... and involves a lot more bullets.
Beyond picking the overall approach, all three paths have branching progress with multiple junctions where you, the players, get to choose how you proceed. Failing certain approaches will require quick decisions and alternative strategies, so being detected after picking the stealth option won't fail you immediately.
A job of this scale will need some serious hardware, including the best getaway vehicles available. The Diamond Casino Heist DLC adds five Heist vehicles and six regular vehicles. The Heist vehicles will help you in your quest to clear out the Diamond and will be stored in your hideout. These include the Karin Everon, Lampadati Komoda, Maxwell Asbo, Maxwell Vagrant and Vapid Retinue MKII.
This is the year's biggest DLC, so there is a lot more content on offer here than just the heist itself. We get a new radio station, which Rockstar announced yesterday, and a side-mission involving the destruction of signal jammers will earn you the support of a pro hacker.
Finally, there is also a new murder mystery to unravel, with a serial killer executing people with an antique Navy Revolver. Clues are to be found all throughout Los Santos, and it might be up to you to find and catch this unhinged murderer.
See you at the Arcade!
