Briefly teased in a recent official post detailing weekly bonuses and in-game discounts, we’ve known for a short while that UFOs will start popping up - and the first sightings are already in. Ever since that announcement, each day a flying saucer has appeared in-game between 10 PM and 3 AM in different locations.
In each case, it merely hovers above ground (or sea, in some cases) without doing much of anything. It does, however, automatically disable all vehicles that get close, and is completely impervious to any kind of damage. At one of the locations, just off the coast from Paleto Bay, it hovers exactly above the crashed UFO wreckage on the seabed that’s been an easter egg in the game since launch. It isn’t clear what the significance of these locations is - except for the peak of Mount Chiliad, which has been UFO central forever - or what exactly Rockstar are building up to, but the GTA community has always been one to bite on any kind of alien-related mystery. It seems the developers learned as much over the years of frantic fan-fueled conspiracy theories and hid some interaction in the teaser. As tested and documented by a player on Reddit, there apparently is a way to coax a reaction from the extraterrestrial visitors. Introduced in The Doomsday Heist DLC, one of the most powerful weapons in GTA Online is an orbital laser cannon that can fire at any location on the map, one-shotting just about anyone and anything. When the orbital laser was aimed at the UFO during its most recent appearance, the flying saucer tanked the shot without the slightest indication of being damaged or even fazed. However, upon exiting the aiming interface, the firing countdown resumed again - the orbital laser has a lengthy cooldown alongside an exorbitant price to prevent it from being too overpowered, so this definitely shouldn’t have happened. As the countdown concluded, audio effects implied that the base was shot by the same orbital laser. The sound of rubble and debris indicated as much, which means that if you shoot at the flying saucer the aliens commandeer your weapons platform and retaliate. So far this is the only form of interaction with the UFO, but if there are any others you can bet on the GTA Online community to find them.
The GTA Online Halloween Surprise, an annual in-game Halloween event, is bound to kick off soon - it always lasts a great deal longer than the actual holiday, so expect at least a week’s worth of special activities - with an alien twist. To what extent we’ll be interacting with these extraterrestrial visitors remains to be seen, but we hope it’s more than just more fleeting easter eggs after all this hype.
