One of gaming’s most endearing relationships?

It’s simply a platonic friendship between two men, one of whom happens to be gay. There’s no innuendo; clearly neither is likely to swing the other way. They talk openly about each other’s love life (and sex life) as if they were two guys talking about their girlfriends. Sure, Luis is a little hard-boiled, and Gay Tony can be flamboyant, but character design is all about making characters identifiable from the off, and then breaking them down. Sure, he’s called Gay Tony, but he’s not as defined by his sexuality as his name suggests. He could easily just be Tony, who is gay, rather than Gay Tony. But, in Liberty City it’s all about standing out from the crowd, and one suspects Gay Tony knew that when he first put the name out there.

More of my thoughts on The Ballad of Gay Tony, and its timing in relation to recent controversy in the UK surrounding homosexuality, in my TheGameReviews editorial that went up today.

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