Nico Bellic spilled plenty of blood for undeserving madmen in the original game. The idea of the inept boss is a running theme in "Grand Theft Auto" games. And in "The Ballad of Gay Tony," the air is profoundly thick with subtext.
That's what I love about the way that Rockstar tells story in "Grand Theft Auto IV." There's the overt story - tales of crime and revenge cribbed straight from DVD. Of course, she frowns upon Luis' dangerous way of life even though he throws her dough every chance he can get.įor those keeping score at home, this is quite a bit of personal backstory for a game that, on the surface, is about gunfights, helicopter battles and automotive killing sprees. Luis' pops skipped out when he was young, leaving his mama to raise three kids on her own. "He's like a father to me," Northwood corner boys Henrique and Armando taunt in unison, finishing a sentence that we assume Luis has said hundreds of times. Luis' closest friends (if you can call them that) know the real score when it comes to Gay Tony. But you gotta wonder: Is Luis (and, behind the scenes, Rockstar) putting on a show - maybe overcompensating a little? Luis makes some Hot Coffee right there in the club then, fairly suavely, gets back down to the business of security. But just in case the player (or anybody else in Liberty City) doubts Luis' manhood, we see the man pick up and hook up with a clubgoer in Maisonette. At first, tales of his prowess come secondhand. There's no hanky-panky happening, even though every jerk in Liberty City likes to infer as much. Luis does more than provide muscle for Prince's floundering nightclub Maisonette.
From minute one we know that their relationship is about more than business. A rare emotional depth blossoms from the odd pairing of the game's titular club owner Anthony Prince and Dominican thug Luis Fernando Lopez. The game, the second expansion for "Grand Theft Auto IV," feels this particular kind of mature thanks to a relationship - one that may be the richest and most complex in videogames. Not the kind that'll get you slapped with an M rating from the ESRB and banned in Germany, but the kind that comes from age and wisdom. No, I'm talking about the other kind of maturity. "The Ballad of Gay Tony" may be the most mature game Rockstar has ever made - and not because the game is full of sex, profanity and violence.
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