The Prologue is where it all begins in GTA V. It drops you straight into a bank heist in North Yankton with Michael, Trevor, and Brad, and while it acts as a tutorial for the basics, there are a lot of moving parts that can catch you off guard if you don’t know what to expect.
I’ve played through this mission more times than I can count, testing every possible interaction, so here’s a complete, practical walkthrough of how to get through it cleanly.
GAME WALKTHROUGH Video
Getting Inside and Dealing with the Guard
The mission starts with the crew already inside the bank. Your first job is to move into the back area and deal with the guard stationed there.
The game wants you to stay on mission, so don’t waste time shooting at random objects like water coolers or windows — nothing happens. The only consequence of taking too long is that your crew starts yelling at you to hurry up.
Once you’re in position, Michael will deal with the guard. After that, you’ll move into the main lobby where hostages are scattered around.
Handling the Hostages
This is where a lot of first-time players get curious and start testing boundaries. Here’s the deal: you cannot kill any hostages.
Shoot the woman on the ground, the guy behind the counter, or anyone else, and the mission fails immediately. Brad will even call you out with different dialogue depending on who you kill, and in one version he specifically references Amanda — though that hostage model isn’t actually her, just a discarded lookalike from development.
What happens if you don’t shoot anyone? Instead of failing, Brad steps in and does Michael’s job for him. He’ll herd the hostages into the broom closet himself, then turn around and complain that you’re slacking. It’s one of those rare moments where inaction changes the dialogue but not the outcome.
Once everyone’s locked in the closet, you need to blow the vault door. There’s no way around this — you can’t enter the vault area early because that door is locked until the scripted moment. If you delay calling in the charge, your crew will keep nagging you with lines like “Come on, call it in. Blow the door.”
The Vault and the Security Guard
After the explosion, Michael and Trevor head into the vault while Brad stays behind to watch the hostages. I never really thought about why Brad doesn’t come with you until I went back and checked — he’s literally guarding the closet. It’s a small detail, but it explains the crew split.
Inside the vault, if you wander past the money, Trevor will start feeding you hints: “You went past the vault,” “The money’s in here,” “Come on, man. The vault.”
The game really doesn’t want you to get lost in a room that small.
Once you grab the cash, a security guard ambushes Michael during the cutscene. Here’s where control switches to Trevor, and you have one job: shoot the guard.
If you don’t switch to Trevor, or if you switch but still don’t fire, the guard will eventually shoot Michael in the head. The death animation changes slightly depending on whether you’re controlling Trevor or not — without player control, Michael flies backward like he took a shotgun blast.
With Trevor active, the animation is more subdued.
The dialogue during this standoff is worth letting play out at least once.
The guard says he’ll remember Michael’s face, Michael responds with “You forget a thousand things every day,” and Trevor eventually calls out that he’s got the shot. But if you wait too long, the guard pulls the trigger regardless.
The Escape: Cover, Cops, and Cars
After the vault, Brad plants a charge on the back door. You must take cover behind the boxes or wall nearby — there’s no way to skip this. If you stand out in the open, your crew will repeat “Get in cover” in about five different ways until you do it. Brad won’t blow the door until you’re protected.
Once you’re outside, the mission becomes a linear shootout. You have to kill the police officers blocking your path. Trying to sneak past them, going around the bank, or exploring the other side of the building results in a “team abandoned” failure. The North Yankton missions are extremely railroaded — the map outside the playable area is basically unfinished, which is why the game forces you down one specific route.
One detail I noticed: there’s a dead guard in the guardhouse near the escape route. It looks like he took a shot from inside the bank area, probably from Brad during the initial entry, though the angle is a little weird.
When you reach the getaway car, you must use it. Running away on foot, even along the exact same route the car would take, triggers another “team abandoned” failure. The mission really wants you in that vehicle.
The Drive and the Inevitable Crash
Behind the wheel, your route is locked. Turn down the wrong street, go the opposite direction, or try to explore North Yankton, and the mission fails for “abandoning the final route.”
The city isn’t fully built outside the mission corridor, if you’ve ever seen videos of people glitching into North Yankton in free roam, you know it’s mostly empty space and broken textures. Rockstar blocked off exploration here because there’s nothing to explore.
The police during this chase are strangely passive. As long as you stay in the car, you can run over officers or shoot them, and they won’t react. You can even get out, aim your weapon, and they still won’t engage. But if you shoot their cars, suddenly they recognize you as a threat. It’s backwards, but that’s how it works.
No matter what you do, the mission pushes you toward the train tracks. Even if you use mods to try to clip through or teleport past the train, the cutscene still triggers — the car disappears, characters glitch out, and the crash happens anyway. The train collision is the anchor point that ends this section of the mission.
The Shootout and the “Deaths”
After the crash, you’re in a graveyard shootout. If Trevor dies here — which is hard to do normally, but possible if you’re using mods or just get overwhelmed — something interesting happens: you can see Michael standing up in the background. He’s not actually dead yet; he’s playing dead, waiting for the script to catch up.
There’s also a weird skip-related bug: if you fail this shootout section three times and choose to skip it, the next cutscene shows Trevor still wearing his mask and carrying the money bag he supposedly left in the car. In the normal playthrough, Trevor takes his mask off after leaving the bank.
My guess is that during development, Trevor was supposed to keep the mask on through the entire heist, but they changed it so he’d be recognizable later. The skip-ahead version accidentally loads an older animation state.
Comparison with a Game I Played
The Prologue in GTA V reminded me a lot of the opening mission in Max Payne 3, where you’re also thrown into a chaotic scenario with limited control and a lot of scripted chaos.
Both games use the opening to establish tone and character without giving you full freedom — but Max Payne 3 is even more aggressive about its linearity.
At least in GTA V’s Prologue, you can experiment with hostages, guard interactions, and police behavior before the game slams the door shut. Max Payne barely lets you look around before pushing you forward. GTA V gives you just enough rope to hang yourself with, which makes the restrictions feel less suffocating.
Final Tips
- Don’t kill hostages. Ever. It fails the mission instantly.
- Take cover when Brad tells you to. There’s no workaround.
- Kill all police during the escape. Sneaking doesn’t work.
- Use the getaway car. Walking fails the mission.
- Follow the GPS route. Deviating fails the mission.
- Shoot the guard during the vault standoff. Waiting gets Michael killed.
The Prologue is basically a tutorial disguised as a heist. It teaches you cover mechanics, character switching, driving under pressure, and shootout basics — all while telling you that North Yankton is a place you don’t get to explore.
Play it straight, enjoy the dialogue, and don’t overthink your options. The game already made the choices for you.
