Storyline missions are a type of mission given to the protagonist by other characters in order to further advance the storyline. Each game in the Grand Theft Auto series forms its central plot around at least several dozen storyline missions.
Description
Missions act as a modern version of levels in video games, and the equivalent of quests in role-playing games. Although missions are required to progress and complete the storyline, they can be completed at the player's leisure.
Most missions are given to the protagonist by contacts such as gang leaders, friends, or basically anyone in need of help in exchange for pay, either directly in person or through mediums such as pager messages, phone calls, texts or emails. A handful of missions are performed independently by the protagonist.
Completion of the storyline is required for 100% completion of the game because they introduce and encapsulate many aspects of the game, including controls, vehicles, locations, weapons, food, clothing etc. Various rewards are given for 100% completion of the game, although this is optional and counts only as a personal statistic.
Storyline Missions
Passing a Mission
When the player successfully completes a mission, a brief jingle will play whilst an on-screen "Mission Passed" message appears, along with the cash reward for the mission. The messages are absent in Grand Theft Auto IV or The Lost and Damned, where only the jingle plays, but return in The Ballad of Gay Tony. A new feature in TBoGT is a gold medal checklist, showing the player whether or not they have achieved certain criteria to achieve a gold medal for the mission. This features also appears in Grand Theft Auto V.
Failing a Mission
If the player does not meet an objective which contributes to completion of the mission, the mission will automatically be considered as a failure by the game and an on-screen "Mission Failed" message will appear, along with the objective that was failed (e.g. wasted, busted, a target escaped etc.). The mission immediately ends and the player must return to the starting location of the mission and retry the mission. In GTA IV and its episodes, only the mission failure reason is shown. The "Mission Failed" screen is absent from these games.
Some GTA games introduce mission checkpoints, and failing a mission in those games offers the player the option to retry a mission from a certain part of the mission without having to restart from the beginning. In GTA IV, this is presented as a prompt via cell phone, while later games turn the Mission Failed screen into a modal menu where the player must choose to retry from the last checkpoint or quit the mission. This option is only available immediately after mission failure. If the player declines the option to retry a mission, they will have to return to the starting location and restart the mission from the beginning. In GTA V, in addition to the other options, an option to skip the failed portion of the mission will be presented if that respective portion has been failed at least three times.
Failing missions does not usually incur a financial penalty, though some (e.g. Bomb Da Base: Act II and The Exchange) will result in the player losing any money spent before/during the mission. Some missions incur other kinds of penalties upon failing, such as the player respawning at the nearest police station (e.g. Architectural Espionage if photographing the casino blueprints before causing the distraction, refusing to put the weapons away when a security guard spots the situation, firing a gun inside the building, or attacking the guard) or hospital (e.g. The Meat Business if trapped in a freezer with Ken Rosenberg, and Stowaway if a firearm is used when inside the plane). In both situations, the player will lose their weapons, armor and money as if they were busted or wasted, unless dating Barbara Schternvart and Katie Zhan in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in which case they will only lose armor upon respawning. In other cases, a wanted level is given (e.g. Home Invasion if the player runs out of time while inside the house and Fuhrberger is alerted before stealing three crates).
The conditions where the "Mission Failed" message appears in side missions is inconsistent across missions in a game and across the GTA series in general. Some missions show a specific "side mission ended" message when the player ends it manually or it ends due to an objective being failed, such as the Taxi Driver mission, while other missions will show a "Mission Failed" screen when interrupted in such a manner, such as the Pizza Boy side mission in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City or the Vigilante mission in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (the latter of which paradoxically still shows a "Mission Failed" screen after a "Mission Passed" screen appears because of passing the required amount of levels). Some missions in GTA Vice City (e.g. Vigilante) and GTA San Andreas (e.g. Black Project) will not display either the "Mission Failed" or "side mission ended" when the player is killed or arrested, and instead simply show the Wasted and Busted message like if not on a mission. The failure reason is usually shown regardless of how the game displays the mission being failed.
In GTA V, failing certain missions (e.g. towing missions, rampages, and triathlons) will just simply show the word "Failed" instead of "Mission Failed", with the failure reason still being shown below the "Failed" text, like other circumstances of mission failure. Failing missions in GTA V also disables some gold medal objectives (such as time or accuracy), preventing 100% completion.
The most common situations that result in mission failure are as follows:
- Death
- Arrest
- Killing an important character
- Destroying an important vehicle
- Abandoning another character
- Letting a target escape
- Spooking/scaring a target
- Not completing a task/mission within a certain time
- Attracting police attention when stealth is required
- Not finishing first in a race
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