someone's plan for making your first GTA 6 playthrough stick in your head forever

Ran into a post on the sub about preserving your first playthrough and it's a fun one. Most of us are already planning to hit record on launch night, but this guy's angle is different. He's talking about deliberately building sensory triggers so the memory actually comes back to you years later, instead of just sitting in a folder you never open.

If you don't know the term, it's that thing where a smell or a taste yanks a whole memory out of nowhere. He calls it the wholesome version of PTSD, which is a hell of a way to put it, but I get what he means.

the actual method

The idea is to make your launch night as unlike your normal routine as you possibly can. Every sense counts.

• Grab a drink you'd never normally buy
• Light a candle instead of your usual LED setup, bonus points if it's scented since that's two cues for the price of one
• Pick up a snack you've genuinely never tried before
• If you always sit, try lying down. Change the room, change the chair, whatever

Then the part people usually skip: once you're done with that first run, put everything back the way it was. Normal routine, normal snacks, normal lighting. The whole point is keeping those weird sensory details tied to that one specific playthrough and nothing else.

he's got receipts too

Apparently he did this by accident with Ghost of Tsushima. Bought some Japanese dumplings he'd never had before, and now eating them brings the whole thing flooding back. That's what made him write the post in the first place.

I'll be honest, part of me thinks this is overthinking it. But also, we've been waiting years for this game. If a cheap candle and a bag of weird crisps means I get to feel launch night again in 2036, that's a pretty good trade. And the timing works out, since we're only days from the November 19 launch and there's still room to plan.

Anyone already got a snack or a drink picked out for launch night, or are you just going with whatever's in the cupboard?

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Source: r/GTA6 · Curated content.