The Best GTA Missions - IGN

The five modern mainline GTA games (and by that, we mean from Grand Theft Auto 3 onwards) contain 346 story missions. 346 opportunities for blockbuster moments, unforgettable sandbox spectacles, career-making crimes, and the occasional excruciating nightmare. But among the missed trains, RC planes, and yoga sessions are some of the most memorable gaming experiences ever crafted, courtesy of developer Rockstar Games. These are the missions that propel us to that next letter on the minimap, the ones that start with a goofy cutscene and end with an orchestra of explosions and emotions.

These are the greatest Grand Theft Auto missions.

11. “Give Me Liberty” - GTA 3

The first moments of Grand Theft Auto 3 are among the most impactful in gaming history. The scene is set in just five short minutes: an opening credit roll accompanied by jazzy piano, a bank heist and betrayal, and an armored convoy attacked on a dark and stormy night in Liberty City. After protagonist Claude is inadvertently freed from his prison transport, fellow escapee 8-Ball gives us our inaugural GTA mission, the first of many, many more to come.

Truth be told, “Give Me Liberty” is incredibly simple. Now trapped in Portland, you and 8-Ball simply drive to a safehouse, then drive to Luigi’s. There’s no real challenge, but as an onboarding experience it’s hard to overstate just how important a first mission can be. Similar titles of the era such as Driver and Stuntman were infamous for brutal tutorials that either bored the player to death or frustrated them to the point of quitting, and it’s not hard to imagine a world where GTA 3 forced you to do slaloms and handbrake turns in a parking garage before letting you loose in the sandbox.

“Give Me Liberty” isn’t just an introduction to a game, it's a bold statement of the series’ evolution and ambitions. In the top-down games, missions were more like goals than in-depth stories, conveyed exclusively through the medium of payphones with a few lines of unvoiced text. “Give Me Liberty” couldn’t be more different, with moody shots of the city establishing a cinematic atmosphere as hazy headlights smear through pouring rain punctuated by flashes of lightning. The vibes are, frankly, immaculate, especially when experienced on the original PS2 hardware, perfectly setting the tone for what GTA would become.

10. “Museum Piece” - GTA 4

“Museum Piece,” like many GTA missions, begins with the protagonist being chewed out in a cutscene. After some heated words between Niko Bellic and mobster Ray Boccino, Niko agrees to sell $2 million worth of stolen diamonds in exchange for Ray’s help locating Niko’s former comrade-in-arms Florian Cravic. It’s a fairly standard pretext for some fun criminal action-adventure, but this one is special for two reasons:

The first is the setting. Unlike a typical back-alley exchange, “Museum Piece” takes place at, you guessed it, a museum. The Libertonian, to be precise, a hybrid of New York’s real-life Met and Museum of Natural History. Spoiler alert: the deal goes south, leaving Nico with no diamonds, no money, and legions of mobsters and cops out for his blood. The resulting shootout sees you blasting through the hallowed marble halls of a dimly lit museum after hours, shattering priceless artifacts and even destroying a dinosaur skeleton that took the developers so long to make they left a salty plaque behind as an easter egg. It’s one of the most unique interiors in the entire series and a refreshing change of pace from seedy warehouses and garages.

What really makes this mission special is that it’s a look into the future. Niko is accompanied on his mission by Johnny Klebitz, the player character from The Lost and the Damned DLC, and the mysterious sniper who breaks up the diamond deal turns out to be Luis Fernando Lopez, the protagonist of The Ballad of Gay Tony. All three stories converge on “Museum Piece,” and in their respective expansion packs we get to see how the deal goes down from Johnny and Luis’s point of view. One mission, three different perspectives. Sound familiar? Switching between characters would become a key part of the Grand Theft Auto formula beginning with 5, but “Museum Piece” pulled it off first.

9. “Black Project” - GTA: San Andreas