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Getting Gold Medals

The urge to obtain gold medals for the quests and missions you do in the game goes beyond simply wanting the sort of visible proof that you have done well, and extends into the more practical motive of wanting to complete the game 100%, which includes obtaining all of the various Achievements that are available in the game.

In this case, there are several Achievements that apply:

Multi-Disciplined (30 G) Attain a gold medal in all applicable hobbies and pastimes.

Solid Gold, Baby! (50 G) Earn 70 Gold Medals in Missions and Strangers and Freaks.

This being the case there is clearly more and perhaps better motivation for getting a gold medal on the different quests, activities, and missions, than simply wanting to show your chops.

The good bit here is that unlike the system used in previous games, in GTA V getting gold for a mission or quest is not restricted to perfectly hitting all of the required conditions in one go or in each go. In place of that, each condition that is part of a quest/mission is independent from the others in the list for that quest/mission.

To illustrate what that means and to cover a very important point about the quests/missions and gold medals, we are going to give you an example...

A Good Example of the Issues with Gold Medals

First thing first -- to get to the Quest and Mission Replay System you hit the Start Button to open the Pause Menu, then select Game and then Replay Mission or Replay Strangers and Freaks, those being the two classes of Mission/Quest you can both earn a medal for AND replay.

For the purposes of this example we are going to use the Mission “Did Someone Say Yoga?”

The reason that we selected this Mission as opposed to another is that it serves as a pretty good example of a Mission or Quest that is set up for you to fail. You read that right -- this Mission was set up so that if you play it using the sort of game play that is usual to playing the game, you will not obtain a gold medal even if you don't make any mistakes in the actions, due to the time it takes. More on that in a moment...

The requirements for this Mission are as follows:

(1) Complete the Mission in 15 minutes or less.

(2) Warrior: Complete the first Yoga pose without fault.

(3) Triangle: Complete the second Yoga pose without fault.

(4) Praise the Sun!: Complete the third Yoga pose without fault.

Each of the above elements are each worth 25% of the score -- get all four you get 100% and that is a gold medal.

If you play through the Mission and blow one or more of the requirements but complete say, two of them, then when you replay the Mission even if you blow the two you previously got right, as long as you get the ones you got wrong before done right this time, you still get gold, because you do not have to complete any conditions you have already satisfied.

As you can see, after you play a Mission, you can then revisit it using the replay menu, which also provides a more detailed description of the required actions to get gold in the list of requirements.

Made to Fail

We mentioned that this is an example of a quest that was designed to be failed -- and it is. The reason for that is that the time limit for this is 15 minutes, but when you add up the time spent completing actions in it, and viewing the different cut scenes, and then add in the potentially long period you can spend flying around LA in the Heavy-Metal style (movie, not music reference) fantasy flying bit following the monkeys and the aliens, and you can easily blow the timer.

In order to get gold on this the player will have to replay the Mission and then do things like skip CS's and dive straight at the ground and slam into the pavement during the flying bit in order to get the Mission completed in the time limit set.

This should be a lesson you carry forward with you with respect to the other Missions and Quests you are trying to get gold on. Basically you should bear in mind that getting gold may require you to play the game in ways you would not ordinarily -- skipping CS's and taking shortcuts you might otherwise not take.