GTA Online premieres new Dre tracks and finally dials-down the phone calls

GTA Online has received another substantial update, this one re-introducing both Franklin from GTA 5's campaign and seeing another appearance from hip-hop legend Dr Dre. Dre has previously appeared in GTA Online but this time arrives as part of a mission chain that sees you trying to recover his newest tracks: Except they really are his newest tracks, being premiered through this update to the game.

The update is called The Contract and sees Franklin return as the manager of a 'celebrity solutions agency', alongside the supporting cast of Lamar Davis and of course Chop the dog. Dr. Dre’s phone gets stolen, and you have to retrieve it, as part of which you'll visit a music studio where you can hang out with Dre 'and get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the hit-making process.'

There's a bunch of additional stuff going on with these Franklin missions, many of which are familiar templates for GTA Online: security contracts, hits, recovering vehicles, you know how it goes.

Arguably even bigger news, however, is that Rockstar has addressed one of peoples' most consistent bugbears with GTA Online: Your ever-buzzing phone. It wasn't great at launch and now, seven years of accrued updates later, is a real pain whenever you log back in. 

Well hallelujah: "Players will now receive fewer phone calls and texts inviting them to take part in new gameplay." Instead most of this stuff has been offloaded to the map, from which you can launch missions.

There are a load of other cosmetic additions and tweaks, all of which are detailed here, as well as tweaks reducing the daily fees for properties and businesses. GTA Online: The Contract is out now.