BBFC Reveals Ballad Of Gay Tony's Swearing, Sex, Violence

22 Oct 2009 at 11:42:29 by Tim McDonald

The BBFC has given Grand Theft Auto IV's second expansion, The Ballad of Gay Tony, an 18-rating.

It's all because of "very strong language, strong sex and violence and hard drug use" according to the classification on the BBFC page. This should surprise nobody considering it's an expansion for Grand Theft Auto IV, but if you want to know the gory details behind the reasoning - which will likely contains some modicum of spoilers, as well as all of the naughty swears  - then read on.

Violence first, as the BBFC reckons it's "a central theme of the game," which shocked us. Shocked. Missions involve killing for in-game rewards, apparently: you can use "knives, baseball bats, snooker cues, and a variety of handguns and long-barelled weapons (assault rifles, machine-guns, shotguns, and the ubiquitous sniper rifle), explosive charges, pipe bombs and rocket-propelled grenades," to murder anyone and everyone.

The swearing is a tad more interesting, though. Apparently, uses of "fuck" and "cunt" are acceptable in a 15-rated game if justified by the context, and their use here supports that. No, it's the swearing elsewhere that would've got the game an 18-rating regardless of other content - there are "at least four uses of very strong language that crop up in some of the cut scenes" which the BBFC "considered to be best placed at the adult category."

And then there's the sex, which I know is what you're really interested in. "The sex is quite strong," reads the BBFC classification, "but always masked and the characters concerned are invariably fully clothed (no nudity)." Protagonist Luis Lopez is apparently seen "slumped on a chair with a woman's head buried in his lap," as well as two occasions of full-on sex. He "stands between a woman's raised legs and thrusts into her and he also bends a woman ove a desk and thrusts into her from the rear."

If that's not enough, there's also "one scene of full frontal male nudity (without a sexual context)." Hurrah!

We've got reasonably high hopes for The Ballad of Gay Tony, as the first piece of DLC - The Lost and the Damned - was actually quite enjoyable.

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