Blitz Play

Blitz Play is a mission in Grand Theft Auto V. It is the third heist mission in the game that protagonists Michael De Santa, Trevor Philips and Franklin Clinton execute.



Preparation
Michael, Franklin, and Trevor meet up with Steve Haines, Dave Norton, and Andreas Sanchez at the Murrieta Oil Fields to discuss business. Once there, Steve and Dave tell the protagonists that the FIB want to rob the IAA. The target: an armored car filled with funds the Agency earned from drug sales. Steve wants you to "requisition" those funds for the Bureau. After the agents leave, Michael comes up with a plan: "classic blitz play." He lays out the general approach, then the team splits up. Soon Michael makes a conference call to his two partners with more details. This unlocks the heist setups missions with each contact point marked as HS on the map. You will need:


 * Masks, that can be brought at Vespucci Movie Masks shop in Vespucci Beach.
 * Boiler Suits, that can be bought at the Ammu-Nation store in Strawberry.
 * Trash Truck, that can be found driving around East Vinewood. One can be found at the airport if the player owns the hangar there.
 * Tow Truck, that can be found parked in La Puerta. Another can be found in the Davis Sheriff Impound, or by the LS Customs at the airport.
 * Getaway Vehicle, that can be any car. The player will be automatically notified if he enters in a vehicle that can be used in the getaway.

The protagonists can engage in other activities and missions between the set-up missions.

Mission
After the three exchange pleasantries, Michael outlines the plan. Trevor needs to find an elevated perch and serve as the lookout, notifying the other two when the security truck is nearing the site of the attempted robbery so they can block the road.

The job starts with the player controlling Trevor in a first-person view as he looks at the oncoming traffic through a pair of binoculars to locate the armored truck. Once he spots it, the camera zooms out and places the player in control of Michael in the garbage truck, who maneuvers the vehicle to block the entire street.

When the garbage truck is in place, a cinematic sequence shows the armored truck approaching the roadblock and screeching to a halt. Now the camera jumps to Franklin's first-person perspective behind the wheel of the tow truck coming down an alley. The player steps on the gas and rams into the target vehicle at full speed. Another cutscene shows the powerful impact of the crash, which tips the armored vehicle on its side.

The player stays in control of Franklin, who walks over and places explosives on the back door of the overturned truck. After detonation, Michael joins Franklin and the guards emerge with their hands up. The alarm is already sounding, and police sirens scream in the distance. The team doesn't have time to collect all the $|cash, so they take defensive positions and wait to open fire on the LSPD.

At this point in the mission the player is given the ability to swap between Trevor, who is perched in an elevated position with a sniper rifle and an RPG, and the two other characters, who are both armed with machine guns near the truck. When the characters are this close together, player-activated switching happens nearly instantaneously, with the world slowing down for a split second so the player can reorient before rejoining the fray. To showcase the speed of these transitions, the play tester fires a rocket with Trevor and switches immediately to Franklin. Before the rocket even reaches its intended destination, he's in full control of the new character.

After disposing of several waves of cops, a brief reprieve allows the rest of the crew to escape offscreen and while Franklin escapes to the placed getaway vehicle. He then promptly blows up the garbage truck in order to destroy evidence and gets into the getaway vehicle. After Franklin feels safe, he contacts Michael and is informed that Michael is on his way to drop off the score. The game then switches to Michael as he drives to the drop-off point. Michael drops off the bonds and begins to speak with their contact. The contact then persuades Michael to get his "crew" (Michael and Franklin) to collect five cars for him in exchange for him allowing Michael to work with Solomon Richards and a massive cash payout for each member of the crew.

Mission Objectives

 * Enter in the Garbage Truck. - (Michael)
 * Go to Cypress Flats. - (Michael)
 * Block the road with the garbage truck. - (Michael)
 * Hit the armored truck with the Tow Truck. - (Franklin)
 * Plant the Sticky Bomb on the back of the armored truck and detonate. - (Franklin)
 * Hold the police that its coming from the street. - (Michael and Franklin)
 * Hold the police that is coming from behind. - (Michael)
 * Kill all the snipers on the front buildings. - (Trevor)
 * Destroy the police helicopter. - (Trevor)
 * Enter in the grabage truck. - (Franklin)
 * Go to the getaway vehicle. - (Franklin)
 * Destroy the garbage truck. - (Franklin)
 * Leave the area. - (Franklin)
 * Go to Devin Weston's Mansion. - (Michael)

Gold Medal Objectives

 * Hawk Down - Shoot down the helicopter as Trevor.
 * Don't shoot it down as Michael or Franklin.
 * Headshots - Kill 12 enemies with a headshot.
 * Kill as many enemies with headshots.
 * Accuracy - Finish with a shooting accuracy of at least 60%.
 * Bodyshots with a low damage weapon will allow more hits to be scored.
 * Alternatively, using a shotgun will hit more easily due to its spread.
 * Switcher - Switch character 10 times.
 * Switch as much as possible.

Weazel News Newspaper
"A Gruppe Sechs armored car being used by the IAA to transport bonds was raided yesterday and the mainstream media refuses to call it what it is, a terror attack. The IAA do important work bolstering American imperialism around the globe, and any attack on them is an attack on the rich white US citizens who enjoy the cheap oil, and manufactured goods that ill-gotten global dominance can bring."

Bleeter Posts

 * @carsnpipes_pedro - "all that money stollen from security spending for healrthcare and now an iaa truck been hijacked thank you again liberal for fucking america"


 * @mackinit2009 - "Armored car hit. Police shootout on streets of East Los Santos. This is like the 90s all over again."

Bugs

 * On the PC version, the game will crash once Franklin phones Michael after the Trashmaster is destroyed. To fix/avoid this, it is recommended that the player saves their game in a different slot (but not an over-written one) before starting this mission. Another option is to commit suicide during the mission, as the game will autosave and should fix the issue.

Trivia

 * The mission is heavily inspired by the introduction robbery from the movie "Heat". This was referenced by Michael, who says that he was inspired by a Vinewood action movie he saw himself. In another possible reference, during the opening cinematic, Trevor refers to Michael as "slick," which Tom Sizemore's character Michael refers to Kevin Gage's character Waingro as. Also, if Trevor has a mullet and hockey mask during the mission, he closely resembles Waingro during the introduction heist. Finally, after blowing open the back doors of the van, one of the guards screams "My fucking ears! I'm fucking deaf!" This is almost exactly the same as is played out in Heat, the back doors are blown open and the guard goes deaf, leading to him being shot by Waingro.
 * The classic "Three Wise Monkeys" (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) pose (seen in the second trailer) is done by the 3 main characters during the set-up cutscene, after being told that their government is corrupt. Coincidentally, monkey masks may later be purchased for the mission.
 * In the gameplay trailer, a scene showed the Securicar crashing into a concrete wall and destroying it entirely. This led many fans to believe that the environment was much more destructible than it actually is in the game.
 * After the Securicar is taken out, one of the personnel says the cops will be swarming the area in ten seconds and they should run. Indeed, exactly ten seconds after that statement, a four-star wanted level is given.
 * No matter what boilersuit Trevor is wearing, the sleeves will always be rolled up and will have a long-sleeved black shirt underneath, with the exception of the green boilersuit, which has a white shirt underneath.
 * It is similar to the Dock Worker Outfit given to Trevor after completing the mission "Scouting the Port". This is because the outfit itself is a boilersuit with a safety vest on.
 * If the player were to replay this mission, a Cheval Fugitive is automatically used as the getaway vehicle, which will be parked in Cypress Flats.
 * Approximately 33 police officers are killed in the ensuing gunfight assuming all officers are killed (this counts NOOSE as well).
 * When Trevor says: At least we are not wearing clown masks, this could be a reference to the initial scene of the movie The Dark Knight, when the Joker crew is robbing the bank using clown masks and some of then also wearing boiler suits. Another possibility is that it is a reference to the game "Payday: The Heist and Payday 2 (Both games are inspired by the movie "Heat"), as the main characters in the game all wear clown masks during robberies. This could also be a reference to Trevor's fear of clowns, which he expressed in Grass Roots.
 * Michael was meant to be the one placing the explosives, as evidenced in the trailers.
 * If Franklin kills the two guards that emerge from the Securicar, Trevor will comment on it, but it seems that he is talking to Michael, not Franklin.
 * Despite the fact that gold medal achievement requires everyone to be wearing hockey masks, the crew wear different masks in the pre-release footage. Also, they all wear blue boilersuits despite the gold medal requiring them to wear differently colored boilersuits.
 * The fact that the IAA are using the proceeds from drug sales is a reference to the real-life allegations of the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking.
 * The gold medal objective Hawk Down is a reference to the infamous Operation Gothic Serpent, commonly known as Black Hawk Down, in 1993 where two Black Hawks were shot down over Mogadishu, Somalia.
 * The player can make one of the characters look like Tommy Vercetti in the mission, The Job, from GTA: Vice City (Green boilersuits and hockey masks).
 * After this mission, a user named @mackinit2009 will post the lines  Armored car hit. Police shootout on streets of East Los Santos. This is like the 90s all over again.''" on Bleeter. It is possibly referencing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, as the game took place in 1992.
 * After this mission, Chef sends a text message to Trevor, offering his services as a gunman in a job. Chef is going to become available as a member of your crew after this.
 * This mission, tied with Three's Company (AP Pistol & Heavy Sniper) & The Jewel Store Job (Carbine Rifle & Tear Gas) has the second most amount of unlocks (MG & Rocket Launcher) for weapons, with The Paleto Score having the most (Minigun, Combat MG & Assault Shotgun). An exception is Franklin and Lamar, as it unlocks Ammu-Nation in general which has Pistol, Knife, Grenades, Armor, SMG, Micro-SMG and any DLC weapons.
 * The Tow Truck is indestructible in the mission, and is not blown up by a protagonist, which is strange because the Trash Truck is.
 * The music that plays in the background is the same song that plays in the screen that appears when highlighting the GTA V disc on the XMB on the Playstation 3.
 * There seems to have been some footage removed from the initial set-up cutscene if triggered as Michael. Although much is made of Trevor's arrival, Franklin suddenly appears standing next to Michael between lines of dialogue.
 * When Franklin rams the tow truck into the side of the armored van, the mission will fail if he hits too close to the front of the van which, for some reason, is marked as "your cover was blown". The van has to be hit in its rear half to avoid this failure.
 * Although listed as the third heist, the second heist, The Merryweather Heist is not a prerequisite, so "Blitz Play" can be done first. Both heists have one thing in common: other than unlocking new missions and new weapons becoming available at Ammu-Nation, neither result in any cash reward (Blitz Play, in fact, actually costs the team several hundred dollars for the boiler suits and masks).
 * Scenes of Blitz Play were seen in the first official gameplay trailer of GTA V including the scene of Franklin ramming the armoured car with the Large Tow Truck.
 * This is one of many missions in the GTA series where stars are deducted, with others including Three Leaf Clover in GTA IV and The Big Score later in GTA V.
 * Despite being a heist, once completed, the game only shows the "Mission Passed" screen instead of the "Heist Passed" screen.