The bank account and cash at risk

Nelson is blunt about it: cash in your pocket is genuinely at risk, because Wasted or Busted takes all of it. Previous games treated a death as a hospital bill and a lost weapon. Here the whole roll goes, which turns the walk home from a job into part of the job.

The counterweight is an account, and Nelson names it as the reason the account exists at all. Banking a take is the decision that ends a robbery properly. The balance also sits in the menus next to the status of the relationship between Jason and Lucia, which is a small tell about how central both are meant to be.

Previews of the Extended Look describe money mattering to the campaign more than in any earlier Grand Theft Auto: certain chapters do not open until you hold a specific amount, earned by stealing and selling cars, robbing businesses and running heists. That is what makes a lost pocketful expensive. Nobody has published the thresholds, so treat any figure you see as unreported.