Storytelling-wise, TBoGT has been pretty great; a return to over-the-top form in some ways, but even better than any other GTA stories in many others. GTA IV, they wanted to tell an immigrant's story, and slowly introduce the whole sprawling entity of Liberty City. With TBoGT, I've been a little weirded out and impressed by the number of ways they convey Luis' character -- I'm not talking about the "Oscar-caliber" writing of the overall story arc, but how much Luis is a product of Liberty City.
There are booty calls instead of dates. It says something about Luis that he just goes up, bangs a chick, and leaves. No dates, no bowling, no food, no drinks, no small talk. He gets texts from Dana -- I don't even know who Dana is; she's faceless, never appearing in cutscenes, or including her face in pictures. Luis also nails them in the toilet of La Maissonette in a few cutscenes. He goes through women like kleenex. So to me, the insipid and pointless date function has been meta'd into the pointless way Luis uses women.
Then there are those "pedestrian" missions; I did my first one for TBoGT, and it was some clingy chick that Luis had been dodging. I'd never seen her before, but it was clear that Luis had. Later on, I checked the internet cafe for an unrelated mission, and there were some more mails from the same character, predating the pedestrian mission.
In GTA IV's Nico storyline, it frequently felt like the non-specific nationality foreigners were all dropped in the same stage. Gay Tony has been doing a very good job of reinforcing Liberty-City as a place, and Luis as a person -- with a life of his own which happened in LC. I feel like I've been dropped in the middle of something.
