If you look at pretty much any wishlist of features that players want added to GTA Online, the chance to change our character's appearance in-game at a plastic surgeon for a fee will appear. This concept has been floating around for a while now, as the feature being added was among the multitude of rumors which flooded the community last autumn. Of course, it turned out to be the mixture of a hoax and a misinterpretation — players could re-customize their characters for free by contacting Rockstar Support.
Recent findings indicate that the idea has been around a lot longer than ever since the community picked it up as the most wanted feature — sooner than the community even technically existed, actually. A set of preliminary in-game collision models for what looks like an operating room were found in some of GTA V's game files.
But data found in game files usually means it's upcoming content, doesn't it? Well, normally you'd be right — provided that the data is found in the files of the most recent DLC. These models were discovered by renowned modder and GTA V fan video creator Abstractmode in the files of the base game.
This means that they have been around since before there was any DLC for the game released, suggesting that maybe the content was initially intended to be in the vanilla game, but was cut during development for whatever reason. Whatever was Rockstar's reason to can this feature, we may never know.
To be truthful, this isn't the first time these models have surfaced, however their previous outing was a less honest one. The models were used by some GTA Online DLC "leakers" who posted them and made it seem like they discovered the next big feature coming to the game. Later on, it turned out to be a hoax — now we know why.
All hope is not lost, however. Some players began reporting a while back that their requests to re-customize their characters has been unexpectedly denied by Rockstar Support. This once again led rise to the plastic surgeon rumor, as Rockstar was possibly running up the feature by no longer providing support-issued re-customization.
With the feature still leading community feature wishlists, Rockstar might choose to revive it in future updates, finishing the work they started before launch. Making plastic surgery an expensive end-game feature to strive for would again motivate players to play and drive up Shark Card sales as well.
Would you be happy to see a plastic surgeon feature in GTA Online?
