The Godfather II - First Look Preview

What do you do if you've become the Don of New York? Some might suggest that you should rest on your laurels and not let the rigours of greed be your downfall. Of course, Dons are businessman and businessmen always want more. How fitting then, that EA has expanded the Mafia world for Godfather II. No longer will you be confined to the island of Manhattan. It's now possible to stretch your legs across the three jewels in the crown of organised crime across the eastern seaboard of the US in the late 1950s.

For those of you who aren't up to speed on the world of true crime in the 50s, those jewels are New York, Miami, and Cuba. Cuba was very much the appendix of US crime syndicates at the time, with the US government, the CIA, and the mob all in cahoots with the US installed regime in the country under the figurehead of Fulgencio Batista. And this is where Godfather II's story begins.

The Wrong Place At The Wrong Time

You play a character that's initially an underboss of Aldo. In the first game, Aldo was the default character name and so EA has bought him back for the sequel as the Don of New York (how he ends up in Godfather I's conclusion). At the beginning of Godfather II, your character (Dominic), Aldo, and Michael Corleone are in Cuba with other mafia families divvying up Cuba's spoils. This is all taken from scenes in the second Godfather movie, where Michael, Fredo, and Hyman Roth are in the country in the midst of the Cuban Revolution.

EA's take on the story has you leaving Cuba pretty quick-sharp as things get hairy, and you're initially tasked with getting Aldo, Fredo, and Michael to safety. Aldo dies in the process, leaving New York without a Don and this is where you come in. Michael Corleone asks you to start a small family in the Big Apple and it's here that you'll start to get to grips with how EA is blending open world gameplay with turf war strategy in Godfather II.

The strategy element of the game is set to drive the story. Godfather II's Executive Producer, Hunter Smith, informed us that completing tasks in the strategy section of the game actually opens up the next link in the game's story (checkout our Q&A for more details). However, the strategy interface itself and how your actions from it affect events in the open world game looks like an entirely freeform experience. It's essentially a detailed version of the turf wars that have graced sandbox games in the past (not least the first Godfather game and Scarface).

Taking a bird's eye view of the city, the strategy interface displays the cityscape and all of the crime rackets that you'll be trying to take over during the game. These rackets include not so legitimate businesses such as gun running, gambling, and diamond smuggling. There are various options available to you in attacking the buildings themselves: Perhaps you'll order crew members to bomb the building before you go for the full-on assault in the sandbox game world, or maybe you'll decide to play a Sting card (awarded for completing certain tasks in the game) and send a made man from the opposing family to the slammer for a week.

These actions have the effect of making your attack on the business that bit easier by reducing the amount of mini-bosses on the property. Once you've played your hand from the strategy view, you'll have to go into the game world and perform the assault on the property in question. It's here that more tactical considerations come into question as you plan your attack to ensure the operation goes smoothly. This might include using one of your engineers to cut through a fence at the rear of the building to aid a surprise attack, or making sure that you shoot the telephone as soon as you get in so that the opposing family can't call for backup.

In each of the game's cities there will be multiple buildings for each racket. Our first look took place in the Miami map, where the EA demonstrators were trying to take over all the gunrunning businesses in the city. Once you've successfully achieved this monopoly, game perks are unlocked for your family that stack the odds in your favour. For example, a gunrunning monopoly gives you and all of your crewmembers bulletproof armour, which bolsters their health by 50%.

Holding a monopoly is no easy feat though, because other families are constantly attacking your rackets and trying to take them over in the same way you are. Crucially, these attacks take place in the strategy and open world sections of the game simultaneously. If you order crewmembers to bomb another family's business from the strategy interface, for example, then you can go into the game world and join them on the job if you want. Of course, with the ever present threat of gang warfare you'll have to make sure that your rackets are well protected. This is done by increasing the amount of guards each business has from the strategy view, although EA will be balancing how many of these are at your disposal, so you'll have to choose wisely when assigning them.

You Gotta Look After The Family, Capish?

Alongside this freeform strategy will be story-based missions. We saw one where you had to visit Miami's District Attorney at Luscious Entertainment (an adult film company) to ask him for a favour. Of course, nothing comes for free in a life of crime, so the DA wants you to go and cause a crime scene at another business so that he can use his police powers to frame someone else for the job. This opens up the tricky issue of witnesses and EA tells us that you'll have to find ways of keeping them quiet, which can be achieved by either eliminating them or using intimidation (the liberal gangster's choice).

One of the things that will be key in all elements of the game is your crew. You start out in New York with only one or two crewmembers in your family. From here, your crew builds in numbers as you progress and each member has their own specialty. Examples include lock pickers, engineers, arsonists, demolition guys, bruisers, and medics. Each specialist opens up gameplay opportunities and you can improve their stats by spending money on them via an RPG style tree. This turns each crewmember into a finely honed criminal machine allowing the engineer, for example, to cut through fences much faster, getting you in and out before the rozzers arrive.

EA wasn't elaborating much on the various multiplayer modes in Godfather II, but we were told that you'll be able to bring crew members from the main game into the online multiplayer. What's more, there will be cross-talk between your single-player and multiplayer games, so that what your crewmembers earn online (new weapons etc.) can be bought back into the main campaign. Additionally, a mode called Don Matches will allow you to bet money against another Don in a multiplayer match-up. The winner can share the loot amongst their teammates, who can then bring the dough back into their single-player games.

Our first look took place in the game's Miami map, which is the second map you'll travel through in the game (after New York and prior to Cuba). Here, your main aim is taking over the city and eliminating the other families (of which there are five in the game). However, what we did see of Miami as our EA demonstrators rolled around the city in a 50s caddy, was a little visually disappointing. Some of the graphics were able to hold their own (such as character models), but the city itself seemed a bit drab and sparse. This may have been because we were playing an early build of the game (there's a few months of development left yet), and it would certainly explain why the environment looked a bit bleached and void of textures in parts, so let's just hope there's more to come from the graphics.