One Heist challenge in GTA Online pays out $10 million in cash

GTA Online's new Heists content was previewed by various outlets at GDC 2015 this week, and according to hands-on with the free upcoming content, there's over 20 hours worth of things to do and quite a bit of money to gain. Oh, and a VTOL Hydra jet too.

According to a really informative piece from Games Radar, most Heists will take between two or three hours to complete, depending on a player's approach to the mission and skills. Each Heist will be split into 20-30 minutes worth of prep missions, so that should help.

To participate, players will need to have reached at least Rank 12, and own a "high-end" apartment. Once these requirements are met, Lester will give them a ring, and a Heist room will appear in the apartment featuring a wipe-board for planning purposes.

Heist leaders will pick three players to join up, but the mission will need to be paid for up front. Games Radar says it will cost around $60,000 but they payouts are worth fronting the money.

Leaders will also be responsible for divvying up the cash once a Heist is completed. These percentage cuts will need to be set before the mission starts, obviously, and its' even possible for leader's to give next to nothing to their crew members.

While that sounds rather unfair, to say the least, crew member will still earn around $12,000 in-game cash for each prep mission with bonuses paid out for kills and performance.

Crews will only have two lives to complete each mission, and once the second death occurs, the task will be reset. According to the preview, checkpoints "are sensibly placed" and a quick start only takes around 15-20 seconds.

One of the Heists even tasks players with stealing a VTOL Hydra jet, which unlocks for free play. The plane is located on an aircraft carrier which is heavily guarded, and in order to complete the mission, the players will need to win the ensuing aerial battle against enemy planes once the jet is stolen.

Co-operation between crew members is one of the main takeaways from the preview, which notes there isn't an incentive to competitive behavior as "renegades will get their comeuppance." Players also won't have to worry about randoms invading a their Heist, which is good news.

Challenges provide extra incentive to finish a Heist and stay alive in the process. The Criminal MasterMind Challenges, for example, require the crew to finish every Heist in order without a crew member dying once - and in Hard mode. One death and the task is reset no matter how much time you put into it.

This is the challenge mode which pays out $10 million, so it's worth doing your best. Smaller incentives for meeting other achievements run anywhere from $10,000 to $1 million, and every completed Heist nets a new Versus modes to GTA Online.

If you head over to IGN, you can read a first-person account of a couple missions as well as watch a clip detailing how to plan a Heist.

You should really head over to Games Radar for the full thing though, it's really on-point with what's included in the content. Here's the link again.

Heists, along with Daily Objectives and Adversary Mode, arrive next week on March 10.

The PC version of Heists will arrive on April 14 when the PC version of the game is released.