Chapter 0: Looking Back
Thirteen years. At age 26, that literally takes up half my life. For that entire time, I have been playing Grand Theft Auto V - and more often, Grand Theft Auto Online. That's a long time to play one game, enough to drive most people to boredom and other pastimes - but yet, since earlier this year, I've found myself returning more than ever for one specific reason: I've been playing it with the love of my life, the person I married last month, Holly.
With Grand Theft Auto VI literally around the corner, and already installed on most of our consoles, I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate GTA Online, and how even though I'd achieved everything I wanted to in the game - playing it with someone and introducing it to them brought back my love for the game and introduced a whole new perspective on it to me.
Chapter 1: My History with Grand Theft Auto Online
I was a day one player of Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online. I initially wasn't even that excited for the game, I'd played GTA games in the past but none of them really stood out to me, I owned GTA IV and it's DLCs, and I'd started with Vice City Stories on my PSP in December 2008, but I think I was just a little too young to properly connect to them. My first love for a Rockstar game was the original Red Dead Redemption and eventually it's multiplayer mode. Truth be told, I didn't even really mean to pick up GTA V that day. It was September 17th, 2013, and it was my niece's 8th birthday. After an average Tuesday at school, we were going to take her bowling, but we needed candles for her birthday cake so we stopped by the local ASDA at the Centre in Livingston. That's where I saw a promotional stand for the game with plenty of Xbox 360 copies remaining. I mentioned being surprised they still had some, and my sister offered to buy it for me, and I was never one to turn down a new game. A few hours later, we returned from bowling and I put it in my console - and things have never been quite the same since.
In the grand scheme of things, Online didn't release THAT much longer after GTA V, but those two weeks felt like an eternity to my thirteen-year-old self. I was abuzz with hype, speculating on how it would even work, what the character creator would be like, where I could live, what the GTA Online character's special ability would be (Admittedly something that never actually happened, but I pretty vividly remember debating with friends about it for a whole night).
Then it finally released, and boy it was a mess.
Struggling to connect constantly, bugs, disconnecting, general instability and lag, and my friend losing his character about four days in. It felt like Rockstar had severely underestimated the appeal of playing Grand Theft Auto with friends. Sure, GTAIV had multiplayer, but this new Online experience had a real sense of progression, customisation, things to buy, characters to meet and cutscenes to witness. It was much bigger, of course it would bring in millions of new players.
But eventually, the dust settled, and the game ran pretty smoothly. Then the updates started rolling in. At first they were smaller packs with just some clothes and about three vehicles, but after two years of waiting, through numerous teases and messages from Rockstar, a PS4 and Xbox One re-release, and a litany of clickbait on YouTube, we eventually got the Heists DLC in 2015 - and boy, did it live up to the anticipation. The mere potential of what a GTA update could be had my mind racing, and every other night I'd send huge lists to the Rockstar Mouthoff email address that were full of -admittedly terrible- ideas for GTA Online updates. This ranged from stuff as simple as a true black business shirt or a kilt, to ridiculously niche topics like a "Scottish Independence DLC" to match the 4th of July content they released. Though I suppose, I've retained some of this hopeful energy in the concepts I still publish here to this very day.
In 2015, I finally got myself a gaming PC which meant I could record myself playing the game with friends on the platform. My 15-year-old self's videos on GTA Online had a similar vibe to my current ones, though they weren't quite at the same quality and feature some semi-notorious people I'd rather not record with now. I eventually moved back to Xbox being my main console because it was where more of my friends were playing the game, which is extra relevant now.
In June of 2020, I was finishing up my second year of college and after a rather rough half of the year due to the terrible mix of Covid-19 forcing us to study from home and frustrating classmates giving me extreme burnout in my studies, I decided to take a gap year before resuming my studies elsewhere later down the line. That's when I saw a Tweet from GTABase advertising that they were looking for new team members. I shot an email in with some of my skills and experience, and suddenly I was writing a trial article to join the team (And you can read it on the site to this day, it's my article on Shark Card payouts needing adjusted - something that Rockstar actually did!)
Chapter 2: Holly
After a long time on a variety of dating apps, I eventually struck gold in early 2025 thanks to Hinge. I met Holly, who had a surprising amount of traits and experiences in common with me; We were both autistic, type one diabetics with care experience for relatives with poor health, we were both nerdy and had a love for alternative music, tattoos, and unnaturally coloured hair, and we were both bisexual and non binary. We both had the same dark and macabre sense of humour, and we both aligned perfectly in terms of activities we liked, and our political alignment. It was a perfect match, I'd honestly felt like I'd been cloned. We laughed together, ranted together, and shared in our excitement for various events or pop culture releases together.
It wasn't long until we were eventually "Facebook official" and introducing eachother to our families. I had shared some of my interests with Holly, showcasing my GTA garages and my CAMP in Fallout 76 - but they had always had a particular interest in one open-world crime game set in a sprawling Californian city since the game's release some time ago: Cyberpunk 2077.
Okay, so, not quite Grand Theft Auto yet - but there's plenty of similarities, and I already owned the Collector's Edition for 2077. I decided to let Holly start their own save on my Xbox and let's just say their gaming skills needed some work. I mean, they were struggling to walk and turn the player camera at the same time. There was a long training road ahead and Holly's Cyberpunk sessions on my XBOX were pretty rare. We had to find time where they were at my house, in the mood to play games, and we didn't have anything else to do. I knew they'd wanted their own console for a while, and as our one-year anniversary approached, I decided to do something special: I bought them their own Series X. This was a gift met with a lot of thanks and a couple tears, and I'm certain I got my money's worth with how much it's been played - though, their reaction was genuinely priceless.
While helping Holly set up some parts of their new flat they'd moved into, I helped set up the console, bought them Grand Theft Auto Online, and helped them get it installed and a character set up. My idea was that by playing together, I could help Holly build up their gaming skills in order to make Cyberpunk easier for them. It also meant I could spend more time with them while we were at our own homes. I'm limited in how much I can leave and how long for due to full-time care responsibilities for my mother who unfortunately has dementia, so that was extremely important to me.
Chapter 3: My GTA Padawan
I realised there was a funny contrast between me and Holly in our GTA experience: I was a seasoned veteran of the game since day one, writing for one of the biggest fan-sites in the Rockstar Games community, having completed all of the game's content and knowing basically all the ins-and-outs of the game. Holly struggled with the clothes menu. Before our first session together, I suggested a fun idea: I record all our first few sessions together, and eventually slow down to recording all of the Heist DLCs as we made our way through them. Holly, as introverted as they are, surprisingly loved the idea.
Our first session was livestreamed, before I edited it into a much shorter and easier-to-consume video. Six months later, it still holds some of my fondest memories of the game. I often go back to see how far Holly's come since then. As the series progressed, and we made our way through different content packs, we slowed down the recording sessions to be just the main storyline DLCs, and eventually just the Heists. This gave us enough time to just enjoy playing the game ourselves, and cut out a lot of the levelling bloat of playing the game.
There was something so exciting about watching Holly play. Their opinion on videogames hadn't been bogged down with years of disappointments, worries of predatory business practices, or strange culture wars. The magic of them hadn't been spoiled by beginning to understand how they work or their limitations. Everything was new, fresh, and exciting - even the stuff that we take for granted, or find annoying ourselves. (Note, they're a BIG fan of the convenience delivered by the Oppressor MKII) This made me start to fall in love with features I hadn't even thought about before, like the ease of using the Casino limo service to get up to Paleto Bay, where all the cheapest businesses are.
July 2026 brought us something special, our first brand-new content update to experience together - and it was a Heist, no less! The Kortz Centre Heist obviously had a lot of mixed reviews from the general community, but the experience of us learning to play it together and making our way through the story and different approaches to the Heist as we learned the optimal way to rob the museum is something that made it feel a little bit extra special to me.
Our videos were never super popular on YouTube (especially to the other types of content I make), but something about making them and cataloguing how far we came felt special, like I was recording our history. Some of our friends and family watched them, too, including Holly's sister. We even had a few guest appearances, including my friend who cuts my hair, and a couple from my niece - the same one whose birthday it was when I got GTA V all those years ago! (As a side note, watching her go from the innocent 8-year-old child she was when the game released to the 21 year old adult who swears like a trooper she is now is also quite insane to me)
Six months after starting the game, Holly has started every business, gained every type of property, and completed almost all the content in the game all without buying a single Shark Card. A lot of people act like Grand Theft Auto Online is a difficult grind-fest that forces you into buying Shark Cards, but I think we've proven that wrong. In recent years, we've had various pay enhancements and changes to businesses allowing players to run them in Invite Only sessions, and all of that has made the game much more forgiving on players with limited time. After all, if someone brand-new to gaming can near max-out their GTA Online progress in 400 hours over only six months without a single Shark Card, that's hardly a difficult investment.
Chapter 3.5: A Goal, the Gift for the Person who has Everything
I eventually decided to share my love for Red Dead Online with Holly too, and while we haven't made quite as much progress in that game, I've loved being able to return to it with a new goal for myself. I have around 130 Gold Bars and a bit over $30,000 in that game, and every role and upgrade possible purchased, so without any new content updates for that game (Regardless of how much potential it has) I feel extremely demotivated when it comes to playing it normally.
Now, with Holly, I have a goal to help them get up to my level in the game. Having that goal to work towards makes it feel much more enjoyable, and more like I'm playing for a reason instead of just to make the big number get bigger.
Chapter 4: Level 100 GTA Fan
The day before the Kortz Centre Heist released, and we were running setups for Cayo Perico, Holly reached level 100. It felt like a huge occasion for us: A status symbol of how far they'd come not only in GTA Online, but as a gamer as a whole. We paused our recording session there, and headed over to their recently-purchased Mansion in the Vinewood Hills to celebrate and reflect on how far we've come. Funnily enough, looking back at this clip, they even hint towards the upcoming proposal which I was completely oblivious to.
And we've only come further since then. In the videos following, Holly has reached their 140s, proposed to me, and we even got married in a very quick matrimonial turnaround! (We wanted to make sure certain unwell family members could make it, so we held a small close friends and family ceremony) It's been thrilling, and I honestly can't wait to see what the future holds for us. GTA VI releases in less than a week, and Holly's birthday was a little over a week ago: Naturally I bought them the Ultimate Edition pre-order as a birthday present. While GTA VI's iteration of GTA Online won't be there at launch, I cannot wait for us to step into the shared Leonida world together as new players, and to grow in skill, experience, and criminal notoriety together from the same level. I'm almost more excited for that than the story, and the hype for the story already gives me palpitations.
Chapter 5: Share the Love
This article is very different from what we usually post here. It doesn't contain any news or insightful information about any games, or anything we think could be done to improve them. It's been a sentimental little nostalgia trip, and I hope the message I've been trying to get across is clear:
Play videogames with the people you love. Share your hobbies with them. Find things you like to do together. Even if what you're sharing is something that was big for you when you were younger and fell out of love with, watching someone else's joy with it will remind you why you even loved it in the first place.
This hobby is magical, love is magical, and there's too much negativity in this world surrounding both of these, so sharing the love is the best way to change that a little bit for the better.
You can watch me and Holly's complete series from start to finish on YouTube by pressing here, if you're curious.
I hope you liked this article, stay tuned for future content regarding GTA VI on GTABase, follow us on our Twitter @GTABase to let us know what you thought of this article, and be sure to have a great day!
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