The Godfather II Q&A Feature

EA made us an offer we couldn't refuse - the opportunity to speak with the Executive Producer on The Godfather II, Hunter Smith. Naturally, we were pretty excited, although this excitement quickly subsided when we entered the interview room: under a crystal chandelier, EA Executive Producers from across the globe discussed pressing matters at a round table in a smoky room. Hunter beckoned us in. "Sit down, sit down," he insisted. "Now what can I do for you?"

TVG: One of the most extensive new features in this sequel is its strategy element. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

We've built an underlying strategy game where the other families in the game are competing for the same things you are. It's a world of a bunch of different organised crime rings; they're trying to take things over just like you are. You see what they're doing and you make choices about what you're going to do next. They make choices about what they're going to do next. You can take something over; they can try to take it back. So, you're really trying to play that experience of being a Don.

You also decide who's in your family; you recruit guys from off the street. They have different skills and specialties and, as you promote them, you can give them more specialties. You spend money on an RPG-type tree in terms of what skills you want them to have over time. You're really taking care of these guys and you're promoting them as you move through the game, making them more powerful so that you're more powerful.

The last thing is that you can take those guys online. The online experience really is about being a Don. Or, as a player, you can go in and play as your crew. So, take their specialties and take them online. The things that you earn online come back into your single-player experience. We're trying to tie those two things together with everything focusing on organised crime.

TVG: In what ways does this differ from the strategy in the first game?

In the last game you basically said, 'Here's the static map. I'm just going to take it over one by one.' It was never changing and once you held something, you owned it. Now you can hold it but you might lose it. A lot of tuning of the game will take into account how much you want to lose it and how hard you want to keep it. You have guards and the ability to send guys out on the attack. You also care about the monopolies because they have lots of game perks, which are going to make the game really different. Last time the hits were just side missions, but now they're really going to impact the game because if you eliminate the other family members using the special conditions it's going to make them that much weaker.

TVG: Will side missions still play a part in the game?

Side missions are all tied into the game and the dynamic jobs you can do for people inside the world - like we did for the District Attorney [in the first look] - but you can also do them for citizens in the world. They'll say, 'Hey, do a favour for me.' You do that for them, which is for the dynamic job or side mission. You can earn intel about what the special kill conditions are for members of the other families.

Everything we tried to do was driving back towards the ultimate goals of the game. I think there's a model in open world games to have a lot of things to do. That didn't really feel like our model. We really wanted to focus on, 'What am I trying to do? I'm trying to be a Don.' Everything should feedback so that you're constantly motivated in that one direction.

TVG: So that's The Godfather II's selling point if you will - it's what sets it apart from other sandbox games out there?

When we think about Godfather, we think about ourselves as building a game about organised crime. We think the market is full of disorganised, street criminal games. And when you think back again, about the film, there's a phrase you heard over and over again: "It's only business".

When Sonny wanted to go and attack the other family for shooting his Don, Tom kept trying to calm him down by telling him, "It's not personal; it's only business. That's just the way life is in the world of the mob." When Tessio was going to be taken down by Michael for double-crossing him he said, "Tell Michael it's not personal - it's just business". And we really want the player to be in the fantasy of living in that role - making choices like that. Think strategically and live with the repercussions of your actions.

TVG: How does the story play out?

In The Godfather I we had a story-arc that was very true to the storyline of the first Godfather film with a little bit of additional content that we put in there, and then we had an open world game. Those two things co-existed but they didn't really feed off of one another, and this time we're really trying to take The Godfather II as our over-arching story in the game, but the Corleone's are playing the organised crime game against the other families.

You work with Michael Corleone at the beginning of the game. If you remember from the film, Hyman Roth is down in Havana, sitting on his balcony, celebrating his birthday with Michael and all the heads of the other families dividing up the spoils of Cuba. You're there at the beginning with Michael, Fredo, and a guy named Aldo. If you remember in The Godfather I, Aldo was the default character name. At the end of the game, he became the Don of New York. You're an underboss called Dominic who works for Aldo.

So, you're all down there in Cuba celebrating the division and how wonderful it's going to be that Batista is now really tightly connected to the mob. That night you're at the party when the revolution happens. Batista gives up power, there's looting in the streets, and you've got to take Michael, Aldo, and Fredo to a plane and escape. Aldo get's killed on the way back and the mob world is in a mess, a couple of other families are dead, and we know that they're all fighting each other.

If you remember from the film, Frank Pentangeli is worried about the Rosato brothers taking over in New York; he doesn't trust Hyman Roth. You're kind of thrown into that mix. Michael trusts you because you work for Aldo and you got him out of Cuba. So he says, "I need you to start a small family." So, at the very beginning of the game you start out as a small Don. In The Godfather I you were an outsider who kind of worked your way up to be a Don. By the time you're a Don, the game's over.

In The Godfather II you start off as a small Don and you start out in New York. New York's a small city where you've got a small number of families and you start to learn how the organised crime rings work; you start to learn how you do hits in the game and how hits affect other families; you learn how to take another of the families, and you get a microcosm of what the whole game is like. Once you're successful there, Hyman Roth invites you to come down and help him in Miami. That becomes a bigger battle with bigger tests.

To make our story even richer, there have been a lot of books written and information recently declassified about the Cuban Revolution, the CIA, and the Mob all working together and we tie that experience into our game - that introduces you into Cuba. Eventually, all three cities are open at once and you're basically trying to pull together all the crime rings in the game and defeat the other families.

TVG: How realistic are the maps compared to the actual cities?

It's funny, because from a visual sense it's all pretty neat [to have true-to-life maps]. From a gameplay sense, it actually creates a lot of frustration for us. So we philosophically said, 'We really want this game to have organised crime; we really want to play off the mechanics that we do well; we want to have battles that go inside and outside, and upside and down - that's the heart of the game. So, let's design the cities with the architecture and the feeling in mind, but design the city around the gameplay and then we'll use the architecture, painting style, the weather, and the trees to give you the feel,' but we were trying not to focus so much on a life sim. We kind of feel like there's Google Earth out there now. If you really want to see the city then go there, you know?

TVG: Is the ultimate goal to take over all the families?

Yes. The ultimate goal is to take over all of the other families - there are five others besides yours - and then to own all of the organised crime rings. We try to make that a clear understandable goal and to make the story drive you in that exact same direction, so the story isn't off on some other plateau.

You can kind of think of it as the story missions leading you into going out in the open world and doing things in the strategy game, then progression in the strategy game leads you into the next link in the story. Last time they were really separated, but this time they're really connected.

TVG: Does it follow the film in the same way that the first game did, in terms of specific scenes etc.?

Yes. And the cool part is you're inside the scenes with your character, but this time you're a Don. You're no longer a guy sitting in the back. You actually have valid lines; you make decisions; you feel like you've got a presence in the world.

TVG: Which actors from the film are involved this time?

[Robert] Duvall. Some of the other actors are just too old. It's an interesting parallel that some of those guys played 60 year-old characters then and now they're 90 or over. Even Duvall has aged a lot - it was almost 40 years ago now. It took us two sittings to get him, you know, good. But he did a great job once he got it. He's still a fantastic actor.

TVG: He's still got it...

Yeah, like James Caan has still got it. Even though his voice is a little gravelly, his energy and his tempo were really up. He was really fun in The Godfather I.

TVG: You mentioned the online multiplayer earlier. Can you expand on your plans for that at all?

Yep. We're not talking a lot about online right now, but the core of it focuses on our idea of building the family and organised crime. You get to play as your crew members with their specialties. The modes are built around their specialties in the game. The things that they earn in multiplayer can be bought back into your single-player experience - getting access to new weapons and things like that. You also have this thing called Don Matches, where you basically take your single-player money and you can bet against another Don. Whoever wins that money can then divide it amongst the guys you played with and they get to take that back into their single-player game. We're really trying to stay true to our idea of being a Don, organised crime, and taking care of your family.

TVG would like to thank the Executive Producer on The Godfather II, Hunter Smith, for speaking to us about what the upcoming sequel has in store.