Grand Theft Auto V - A Crimeless Playthrough Of Gta Online
Ever since the first installment of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, the series has been surrounded by controversy due to its realistic depiction of violence, crime, and gore. All of these games are built at their core with criminality in mind, allowing Rockstar to create unique and gritty stories about the many moving parts of the criminal underworld.
Most of these games will have you follow the life of a criminal with little to no freedom from that premise. The only slight exception to this is the game GTA Online, where you have the freedom to choose who you are and what you want to do. If this sounds stupid to you, believe me, you don't even know the half of it.
So before we get into this, I'm going to lay down some ground rules. Obviously, I'm not allowed to commit a single crime. No running red lights, no stealing vehicles, no theft, etc. I'll also be doing my absolute best not to kill anyone, even in situations where it could be considered self-defense.
As the fictional city of Los Santos is based on the real-life city of Los Angeles. I'll be trying my best to abide by California's laws, and as a final rule. I'll be doing this challenge completely solo. No one will be allowed to help me make money. My end goal for this article is to just reach 1 million dollars.
Now that all of that is out of the way, let's start our journey to be a goody two-shoes in a world filled with toxicity and explosions. The first thing on our to-do list is to create our character. I decided to give him some pretty basic brown hair, some freckles, and some baby blues, and after spending an embarrassingly long time thinking of a name for this guy.
I eventually decided to go with Nigel. After pressing accept and taking his mug shot, it just then dawned on me that I had literally no plan as to how I was going to be doing this, but alas. I was now locked in and ready to face whatever this challenge would throw at me. I chose to go through with the tutorial, and after watching this shockingly outdated introduction, Nigel finally arrives in the city of saints.
After getting off the plane, we are greeted by a suspicious individual known as Lamar. After a bit of chit-chat, we enter his car. Not even 10 seconds off the plane, we almost immediately fail his challenge as he gives us a loaded and untraceable firearm. California is known for having some of the most restrictive gun laws in the U.S.
You are generally prohibited from openly carrying any kind of loaded firearm. As this is a cutscene, I obviously can't do much about it, but don't worry, I'll be sure to hand this weapon in to the proper authorities at the first chance I get. In the meantime, Lamar drives us around Los Santos whilst telling us about some pretty shady jobs that we can do to make some money, which we obviously won't be doing.
After a couple of minutes, Lamar parks his car and then challenges us to a race, which, unfortunately, As we are still locked into the tutorial, we have no choice but to participate in it. As the race started, I tried my best to obey all traffic laws. However, as I'm from England, where we drive on the left side of the road, I found this surprisingly difficult as I waited at red lights and gave way to pedestrians.
Everyone else sped past me and, to the surprise of no one, I lost. As soon as the race timer ended, my car went into auto-drive mode and started to drive recklessly. As I clearly wasn't in control and I couldn't do anything to stop it, I'm not counting this as a fail on a challenge. After the race, Lamar forces us to do a job for him, but he doesn't give us many details as to what it entails.
Since we're still in a tutorial, we have no choice but to comply. After the cutscene ends, I realize that I've been put in a car with another player and he's the one behind the wheel. I quickly jumped out, as I didn't want to be associated with this maniac. I then quit the job through my phone, and of course, in typical GTA fashion, I get stuck in an infinite loading screen and have to restart my game.
Once I get back, the same job starts up, but thankfully this time I'm by myself. As I'm about to drive off, I stop and think of something. Is this vehicle actually insured in my name and is it road legal? Without wanting to take the risk, I decided to walk to the mission objective instead, which took a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would.
When I arrived there, I walked up to this kind gentleman and politely told him that I was here to pick something up, to which he responded. Luckily, dying isn't a crime in California, but engaging in combat with a whole gang of armed men and stealing their illegal substances definitely is. I had no way to complete this mission without doing something illegal, and therefore it was impossible to progress.
This run was over before it even truly started, and the only way to get past this was to skip the whole tutorial altogether. And that's exactly what I did. I deleted the old Nigel and made a new one, but this time I skipped the tutorial, and finally, after wasting over an hour, I was in free mode.
The first thing I saw when I spawned was two players ramming into each other with their cars. So as to not get involved with these unlawful individuals, I left and made myself a private session. This is where the real journey begins. I have no money, no cars, no houses, just a shirt on my back and a strong moral compass by my side.
I was ready to take this legitimate weld on. The first thing I did was hand this illegal firearm over to the cops. Once that was done, I then brainstormed some ways to get myself some easy and clean money. My first mistake was to head to the shooting range as it was relatively close by and just because I needed a legal way to blow off some steam.
After playing for a few minutes, I decided to call it quits to check how much money I had made so far, and I'm happy to report that I made absolutely nothing. The only thing I got was a measly 10 RP. At this point, I was starting to question if this challenge was even possible and if I was just wasting my time.
However, still hanging on to what little hope I had, I thought that a game of tennis would surely give me a little bit of money, at least after walking all the way to the nearest tennis court. I quickly came to realize that I wasn't even at a high enough level to play tennis. I thought that there was literally no way to make money at the start without breaking some rules, but then I remembered something.
There are 100 collectible action figures which are strewn around the map, each one giving you 1000 and 1000 RP. Feeling encouraged again, I looked up a map of all the action figures and went for the ones that were closest to me. Although this is a good beginner's way to get some money, it's still an excruciatingly long process as I had to either walk or get a cab to the figure locations.
