Tony and his spoiled-brat friend Yusuf Amir dole out many of your missions. Through Tony, players get a glimpse of the New York high life, something GTAIV has so far stayed far away from. Tony owns some of the city's most popular high-end nightclubs, but he's struggling with business problems and drug addiction. Also like Niko and Johnny, Luis has a troubled past and a present situation that requires him to break the law he grew up poor, recently spent time in prison, has friends and a mother who lure him into criminal mischief, and works as a bodyguard/assistant for a man nicknamed Gay Tony.Īll of these elements play about equal roles in the game's first few hours, but thereafter Luis's past falls off the radar and the Gay Tony story takes precedence. Like them, he is a cold-hearted killer who's just a little bit more sensible than the people around him. Players take control of Luis Lopez, who has a fair amount in common with his predecessors, Niko Bellic and Johnny Klebitz.
This isn't obvious right away at first glance, The Ballad of Gay Tony is just more GTA.
In that sense (and most others), The Ballad of Gay Tony is an almost perfect end to this GTA iteration. It's taken two expansions, The Lost and Damned and now The Ballad of Gay Tony, to flesh out the Big Apple's various cultures and classes. Even GTA IV, though, only captured the city's size geographically.
New York is a big city, and Grand Theft Auto IV was perhaps the first video game to truly capture that.