The Ballad of Gay Tony

Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony is the second of two episodic expansions for Grand Theft Auto IV, developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was released for the Xbox 360 on 29 October 2009. It is set in Liberty City in 2008, the same year as the main game and the first episode, The Lost and Damned, and its hero is a bodyguard working the city's nightclubs.

Story

The protagonist is Luis Fernando Lopez, a Dominican-American former drug dealer. He now works as a bodyguard and business partner to nightclub owner Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince. Rockstar's own synopsis describes Luis as a part-time hoodlum and full-time assistant who struggles with the competing loyalties of family and friends in a world where everyone has a price. Tony runs two clubs, Maisonette 9 and Hercules, and his debts to the Ancelotti family and to Mori Kibbutz drive much of the plot.

Luis is voiced by Mario D'Leon and Tony by David Kenner. Omid Djalili plays Yusuf Amir, an Emirati developer who hires Luis for jobs that include stealing an attack helicopter, an armoured personnel carrier and a subway train. The writers were Dan Houser and Rupert Humphries.

What sets the episode apart in the story is how closely it sits against the other two. Luis witnesses the Bank of Liberty robbery from Grand Theft Auto IV's mission Three Leaf Clover, so the events overlap in time and place. The episode also closes the diamonds subplot that runs through all three stories. The Lost steal Tony's diamonds and kill his boyfriend, Evan Moss. Luis then ambushes the exchange between Johnny, Niko and the Jewish mob. He and Tony use the diamonds as ransom for Gracie Ancelotti, whom Niko kidnapped in Grand Theft Auto IV, before the Russian crime lord Ray Bulgarin steals them. In the ending a homeless Vietnam War veteran finds them in a trash bag, sells them and leaves for Vice City.

Gameplay

As in The Lost and Damned, the whole map, including every borough and Alderney, is open from the start. Missions are now scored on performance and goals, a system first used in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and they can be replayed to improve the score.

The new equipment is a parachute, with an altimeter on the HUD, and it comes with BASE jumping. The new activities fit the club setting: Club Management, an Underground Fight Tournament, Triathlon Races and Drug Wars, along with golf at a driving range, club dancing, drinking games and air hockey. Luis's friends Armando and Henrique can supply weapons and vehicles.

Release and editions

The episode arrived in two forms on the Xbox 360: as a download for Grand Theft Auto IV owners, and on disc in Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, which includes both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony and does not require the base game. Both episodes were timed Xbox 360 exclusives under a strategic alliance between Rockstar and Microsoft.

Episodes from Liberty City and the downloadable episodes reached PlayStation 3 and PC on 13 April 2010 in North America and 16 April 2010 in Europe. Rockstar Toronto ported the episode to Windows. On 26 October 2010 Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition put the stories of Niko Bellic, Johnny Klebitz and Luis Lopez into one package for PS3 and Xbox 360.

Since 9 February 2017, Grand Theft Auto IV and Episodes from Liberty City have been playable on Xbox One through backward compatibility, and Rockstar also pointed players to the Xbox Store for both episodes. On Windows, the standalone release of Episodes from Liberty City was discontinued in 2020 and replaced by a single-player version of Grand Theft Auto IV: Complete Edition.

Reception

Metacritic rates the Xbox 360 version 89 out of 100 and the PS3 version 87. IGN gave 9.2 out of 10 and Eurogamer 8 out of 10. Rockstar's own newswire quotes IGN's review of the PS3 Episodes from Liberty City, which called the two episodes the perfect way to close out the Grand Theft Auto IV saga. The episode won Best DLC at the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards.

Critics singled out the depiction of its title character. In 2013 Complex named Tony Prince the coolest gay video game character.

Sales of the boxed edition started slowly. GameSpot reported that Episodes from Liberty City sold under 160,000 units at US retail in its first month, against analyst forecasts of 2.25 to 2.75 million. That figure covers only the disc release at US retail, not the downloads.