Exclusive Interview with Neil Ferguson - GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony
GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony - Interview with Neil Ferguson, Senior Level Designer at Rockstar North
As the latest episode of the Liberty City GTA saga rolls onto XBOX 360, Rockstar North Senior Level Designer Neil Ferguson sits down for a quick Q&A.
Below he discusses the nightlife of Liberty City in The Ballad of Gay Tony, the critically acclaimed final episode in the Grand Theft Auto IV saga, which is now available exclusively on XBOX 360.
You’ve discussed before that The Ballad of Gay Tony revolves around Liberty City’s high life and nightlife. What inspirations were you drawing from to create that?
Neil Ferguson: We were drawing from many different eras of New York nightlife, from the crazy days of disco in the late 70s and early 80s up to the celebrity-obsessed, super exclusive clubs of today. But the clubs themselves aren’t new to Liberty City, they have been built into the game since Grand Theft Auto IV, they’ve just been inaccessible up to now.
Tony Prince owns two clubs that he runs with Luis and his security team. The first is Maisonette 9, the kind of trendy nightclub with an exclusive door policy, a well-dressed celebrity clientele and its own flock of paparazzi hangers-on who lurk nearby hoping to shoot photographs of drunken A-listers. Drinks are incredibly expensive and the women are beautiful but unattainable to your average club-goer. The doorman for Maisonette 9 is Dessie: cool under pressure, experienced and helpful, Dessie takes no nonsense from try-hards looking to get in.
The other club is Hercules, Liberty City’s coolest gay club. In terms of Liberty City’s more alternative nightlife scene, Hercules is relatively mild, and pulls in plenty of girls looking for a safe place to dance away from the meat market of mainstream clubs. A guy by the name of Troy works the door for Tony. Troy wants to be famous and thinks being a bouncer is the way to get there, but he’s stuck working the door at a gay club, which he resents - and he makes it known to anyone who’ll listen.
Bahama Mama’s, another club but owned by rivals of Tony's, is one of those mainstream clubs. Catering to a mixed clientele, mostly from the outer boroughs of Alderney, Broker and Dukes, Bahama Mamas is always packed, full of the 9-5 crowd losing their minds on alcohol and anything else they can get their hands on, dancing 'til dawn to the latest club hits.
What kind of music does each club play?
NF: Maisonette 9 is on the cutting edge, featuring DJ sets from Italian hit sensations Crookers, who rode to fame on their remix of Kid Cudi’s Day’n’Nite. Hercules focuses on the golden era of disco like the club classic ‘Menergy’ featured in the Tony Prince profile video, while Bahama Mama’s bangs out the mainstream club anthems.
Are the clubs simply locations or do they have their own related gameplay?
NF: Clubs are a central feature of gameplay in The Ballad of Gay Tony for several reasons. The first one is simply from the point of view of the story, which revolves around Luis and his attempts to keep him and his employer Tony Prince out of trouble with Tony’s various creditors, who happen to be some of the more powerful players in Liberty City’s criminal underworld. But in the Rockstar tradition of packing the world itself full of a range of other activities, the clubs have their own part to play. As Tony’s club manager, Luis can work nights at the clubs, spawning their own sets of mini-missions involving, among other things, attending to the needs of particular celebrities or dealing with club security and unruly club patrons.
Are the clubs accessible when you’re not on a mission?
NF: Luis has access to Tony’s clubs any time he likes, but if he wants to check out the clubs outside of any specific missions, Luis’s old neighborhood friends, Armando and Henrique are always ready to party. You can call up and go to clubs just to hang out and drink and maybe check out some girls. If you head to the VIP room Maisonette 9, you can play a mini-game where you can shake up a bottle of champagne and spray the crowd with it – but then you have to try and drink the whole bottle without throwing it up. And there’s a brand new dancing mechanic that we feel is a lot of fun and goes beyond a simple rhythm game. You can get the whole club moving, and girls will definitely pay attention if you have skills on the dance floor. It’s all part of our goal to pack Episodes from Liberty City with as much action and vibe as possible.
The nightlife in Liberty City is very much part of the experience The Ballad of Gay Tony has to offer. We've even included it as our No. 10 reason why Ballad rocks.
If you haven't yet, be sure to check out our GTA: Episodes of Liberty City review now.
Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City releases in Australia and New Zealand on 29 October 2009 with an SRP of $69.95, and contains both the critically acclaimed Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony episodes for the Xbox 360.
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