Polygon compares GTA 6 to The Ballad of Gay Tony, the 2009 GTA IV expansion: same taste for clubs, music and excess. Rockstar has never mentioned that inspiration.
Sources polygon.com
Which Grand Theft Auto looks most like GTA 6? For Polygon, the answer lies not with Vice City but with The Ballad of Gay Tony, the second and final GTA IV expansion, released in 2009.
The argument from Polygon starts from roughly 30 minutes of official footage across the four main trailers: nightlife, escalating heists, pastel pinks, high-end sports cars and set pieces even bigger than GTA V's. None of it is unique, the writer notes, since the 2009 expansion already swapped GTA IV's grim streets for a gaudier Liberty City built around clubs, champagne and ever more absurd missions.
In Gay Tony you play Luis Lopez, a club manager and right-hand man to Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince, who runs Maisonette 9 and Hercules. Tony's debts threaten his empire, and Luis is caught between loyalty and temptation. Polygon sees an echo of Jason and Lucia, whose criminal ambitions risk pulling them too far. It also points to the central role of music and nightlife, figures such as club owner Boobie Ike or the rap duo Real Dimez, and a Schafter sedan seen in the extended trailer, a nod, it says, to the car tied to Tony.
On action, the writer picks "For the Man Who Has Everything", where you lift a subway car, and "Sexy Time", where you steal a Buzzard helicopter off a yacht and blow the ship up with its own missiles. In the writer's view such sequences could slot into GTA 6 without changing a beat. The taste for excess later fed GTA Online, the piece adds.
Read also GTA 6 on-foot radio and podcasts: a first for Rockstar games
This is an editorialist's reading, not Rockstar information: the studio has never said it drew on that expansion. It interests us for another reason. Clubs, music and showing off are also what Vice Bay Radio stages, and the soundtrack by Justice, covered in this article, already sets the tone.
Nothing changes in the game, but it is a useful lens for November 19: if Rockstar kept the spirit of Gay Tony, expect a campaign livelier and faster than GTA IV's. To be checked controller in hand.
Sources polygon.com
By Chloé · GTAVIFRANCE newsroom
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