Helicopter
The Police Helicopter joins the Grand Theft Auto VI lineup as a four-bladed helicopter. It is based on the Airbus Helicopters H135.
The police/"chopper" variant of the Helicopter (and later the Police Maverick) is a police helicopter in the .
The helicopter first appeared as a police variant of the standard Helicopter in GTA III, and then later appears as an uncontrollable variant of the existing Police Maverick in GTA: Vice City, GTA: Liberty City Stories and GTA: Vice City Stories. The helicopter is internally named "chopper" but assumes the name "Helicopter" in-game across all of its appearances, with the exception of GTA: Vice City Stories, where it is named "VCPD Maverick" like its standard variant.
The helicopter is designed as a large vehicle bearing similarities to the Bell 205. The original game's rendition bears a blue-and-white LCPD livery similarly adopted for the game's police road vehicles early in game development, and comes equipped with a gunner or turret, which fires bullets from its underside, a search light that is commonly used at night, and a loudspeaker used by two occupants on board to (hilariously) address the player. One of the pilots on board will be calm towards the player, whilst the other tries to argue over the loudspeaker and is negative towards the player. According to an in-game news report, the helicopters were only recently introduced in Liberty City (circa 2001) to aid the police force in fighting crime, even though police helicopters can still be seen in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories which is set in 1998, 3 years before GTA III, probably, because the developers ignored the in-game news report.
In Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, the helicopter appears as a variant of the existing Police Maverick, itself based on a standard Maverick. In reality, the NPC Police Maverick is the reused police Helicopter from Grand Theft Auto III, using the regular model of the GTA Vice City Police Maverick model, with slight differences: The back doors on airborne Police Mavericks slide back, unlike the usable ones, where the back doors of Police Mavericks available to the player swing open instead. The back doors are open for the animation of the SWAT team rappelling down from the police helicopter. In GTA Vice City Stories, the slide-door variant retains the GTA Vice City green and white livery, contrary to the olive/gold and white livery of the drivable version. The slide-door variant is not normally available to the player. In GTA Liberty City Stories, the windows of the helicopter are blackened, obscuring the interior.
If the player manages to obtain it (not possible by normal means) in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the helicopter is useless and does not accelerate. It also misses some features such as leaning (however, it can lean left/right), going down and turning. When the helicopter is in mid-air, it will fall through the ground immediately due to its "bullet/rocket collision only". This is due to the fact that there is no code in the game's handling files for the helicopter's flight characteristics. The game instead uses a special physics engine to control the AI-controlled police helicopter that follows the player at a high wanted level.
In Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, however, the NPC Police Maverick performs exactly like a regular Police Maverick, due to the fact that there is no scripted path file for it like in GTA Vice City. However, it retains its abilities, and is thus extremely responsive and fast - it can accelerate to full speed and also quickly stop. It can also accelerate upwards very fast, past the height limit of the game without any limitations, also retaining its black windows, obscuring its interior.
